^ 


c^<:«g^^<'V 


GIFT  OF 
Estate  Of  Caroline  Le  Conta 


F^ 


Sic 


■^^ 


"**-! 


VO^y.j 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Arciiive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/essaysofeliatheOOIambrich 


THE 


ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A. 


f 


BY    CHARLES    LAM1b 


FIRST    SERIES. 


NEW-YORK: 

WILEY   &    PUTNAM,    161    BROADWAY 

1845 


ili^ 


CONTENTS.  \%^^ 


PAOI 

Thk  Sovth-Sea  Hottse I 

Oxford  in  the  Vacation 9 

Christ's  Hospital,  Five-and-Thirty  Years  Ago 15 

•^^HE  Two  Races  of  Men 28 

^Ew- Year's  Eve 34 

Mrs.  Battle's  Opinions  on  Whist 41 

'A  Chapter  on  Ears 48 

All  Fools'  Day 53 

A  Quakers'  Meeting 57 

The  Old  and  the  New  Schoolmaster 62 

*^Imperfect  Sympathies 71 

•-IWlTCHES,    AND   OtHER    NiGHT   FeARS 80 

Valentine's  Day 87 

My  Relations 91 

Mackery  End,  in  Hertfordshire 98 

My  First  Play 103 

Modern  Gallantry 108 

>>d'HE  Old  Benchers  of  the  Inner  Temple 113 

^RACE  Before  Meat 124 

XDream-Children  ;  a  Reverie 131 

Distant  Correspondents 135 

The  Praise  of  Chimney-Sweepers 141 

A  Complaint  of  the  Decay  of  Beggars  in  the  Metropolis.  .  148 

)t^  Dissertation  upon  Roast  Pig 156 

A  Bachelor's  Complaint  of  the  Behavior  of  Married  People  164 

On  Some  of  the  Old  Actors 171 

On  the  Artificial  Comedy  of  the  Last  Century 183 

On  the  Acting  of  Mundew 191 


E  LI  A 


THE  SOUTH-SEA  HOUSE. 

Reader,  in  thy  passage  from  the  Bank — where  thou  hast  been 
receiving  thy  half-yearly  dividends  (supposing  thou  art  a  lean  an- 
nuitant like  myself) — to  the  Flower  Pot,  to  secure  a  place  for 
Dalston,  or  Shacklewell,  or  some  other  thy  suburban  retreat 
northerly, — didst  thou  never  observe  a  melancholy-looking,  hand- 
some, brick  and  stone  edifice,  to  the  left — where  Threadneedle- 
street  abuts  upon  Bishopsgate  ?  I  dare  say  thou  hast  often  ad- 
mired its  magnificent  portals  ever  gaping  wide,  and  disclosing  to 
view  a  grave  court,  with  cloisters,  and  pillars,  with  few  or  no 
traces  of  goers-in  or  comers-out — a  desolation  something  like 
Balclutha's.* 

This  was  once  a  house  of  trade, — a  centre  of  busy  interests. 
The  throng  of  merchants  was  here — the  quick  pulse  of  gain — 
and  here  some  forms  of  business  are  still  kept  up,  though  the 
soul  be  long  since  fled.  Here  are  still  to  be  seen  stately  porticos; 
imposing. staircases,  offices  roomy  as  the  state  apartments  in  pal- 
aces— deserted,  or  thinly  peopled  with  a  few  straggling  clerks  ; 
the  still  more  sacred  interiors  of  court  and  committee-rooms,  with 
venerable  faces  of  beadles,  door-keepers — directors  seated  in  form 
on  solemn  days  (to  proclaim  a  dead  dividend),  at  long  worm-eaten 
tables,  that  have  been  mahogany,  with  tarnished  gilt-leather  cov- 
erings, supporting  massy  silver  inkstands  long  since  dry  ; — the 
oaken  wainscots  hung  with  pictures  of  deceased  governors  and 
sub-governors,  of  queen  Anne,  and  the  two  first  monarchs  of  the 
Brunswick  dynasty  : — huge  charts,  which  subsequent  discoveries 

*  I  passed  by  the  walls  of  Balclutha,  and  they  were  desolate. — Osbian. 

2 


2  ELIA. 

have  antiquated  ;  dusty  maps  of  Mexico,  dim  as  dreams, — and 
soundings  of  the  Bay  of  Panama  !  The  long  passages  hung  with 
buckets,  appended,  in  idle  row,  to  walls,  whose  substance  might 
defy  any,  short  of  the  last  conflagration  : — with  vast  ranges  of 
cellerage  under  all,  where  dollars  and  pieces-of-eight  once  lay, 
an  "  unsunned  heap,"  for  Mammon  to  have  solaced  his  solitary 
heart  withal, — long  since  dissipated,  or  scattered  into  air  at  the 
blast  of  the  breaking  of  that  famous  Bubble. 

Such  is  the  Soutii-Sea  House.  At  least,  such  it  was  forty 
years  ago,  when  I  knew  it, — a  magnificent  relic !  What  altera- 
tions may  have  been  made  in  it  since,  I  have  had  no  opportunities 
of  verifying.  Time,  I  take  for  granted,  has  not  freshened  it. 
No  wind  has  resuscitated  the  face  of  the  sleeping  waters.  A 
thicker  crust  by  this  time  stagnates  upon  it.  The  moths,  that 
were  then  battening  upon  its  obsolete  ledgers  and  day-books,  have 
rested  from  their  depredations,  but  other  light  generations  have 
succeeded,  making  fine  fret-work  among  their  single  and  double 
entries.  Layers  of  dust  have  accumulated  (a  superfoetation  of 
dirt !)  upon  the  old  layers,  that  seldom  used  to  be  disturbed,  save 
by  some  curious  finger,  now  and  then,  inquisitive  to  explore  the 
mode  of  book-keeping  in  Queen  Anne's  reign ;  or,  with  less  hal- 
lowed curiosity,  seeking  to  unveil  some  of  the  mysteries  of  that 
tremendous  hoax,  whose  extent  the  petty  peculators  of  our  .day 
look  back  upon  with  the  same  expression  of  incredulous  admira- 
tion, and  hopeless  ambition  of  rivalry,  as  would  become  the  puny 
face  of  modern  conspiracy  contemplating  the  Titan  size  of 
Vaux's  superhuman  plot. 

Peace  to  the  manes  of  'the  Bubble  !  Silence  and  destitution 
are  upon  thy  walls,  proud  house,  for  a  memorial ! 

Situated  as  thou  art,  in  the  very  heart  of  stirring  and  living 
commerce, — amid  the  fret  and  fever  of  speculation — with  the 
Bank,  and  the  'Change,  and  the  India-house  about  thee,  in  the 
hey-day  of  present  prosperity,  with  their  important  faces,  as  it 
were,  insulting  thee,  their  poo^  neighbour  out  of  business — to  the 
idle  and  merely  contemplative, — to  such  as  me,  old  house  !  there 
is  a  charm  in  thy  quiet : — a  cessation — a  coolness  from  business 
— an  indolence  almost  cloistral — which  is  delightful !  With  what 
reverence  have  I  paced  thy  great  bare  rooms  and  courts  at  even- 


THE   SOUTH-SEA  HOUSE. 


tide  !  They  spoke  of  the  past : — the  shade  of  some  dead  ac- 
countant, with  visionary  pen  in  ear,  would  flit  by  me,  stiff  as  in 
life.  Living  accounts  and  accountants  puzzle  me.  I  have  no 
skill  in  figuring.  But  thy  great  dead  tomes,  which  scarce  three 
degenerate  clerks  of  the  present  day  could  lift  from  their  en- 
shrining shelves — with  their  old  fantastic  flourishes,  and  decora- 
tive rubric  interfacings — their  sums  in  triple  columniations,  set 
down  with  formal  superfluity  of  ciphers — with  pious  sentences  a* 
the  beginning,  without  which  our  religious  ancestors  never  ven- 
tured  to  open  a  book  of  business,  or  bill  of  lading — the  costly 
vellum  covers  of  some  of  them  almost  persuading  us  that  we  an 
got  into  some  hetter  library, — are  very  agreeable  and  edifying 
spectacles.  I  can  look  upon  these  defunct  dragons  with  compla- 
cency. Thy  heavy  odd-shaped  ivory-handled  pen-knives  (our 
ancestors  had  everything  on  a  larger  scale  than  we  have  hearts 
for)  are  as  good  as  anything  from  Herculaneum.  The  pounce- 
boxes  of  our  days  have  gone  retrograde. 

The  very  clerks  which  I  remember  in  the  South-Sea  House — 
I  speak  of  forty  years  back — had  an  air  very  different  from  those 
in  the  public  offices  that  I  have  had  to  do  with  since.  They  par- 
took of  the  genius  of  the  place  ! 

They  were  mostly  (for  the  establishment  did  not  admit  of  su- 
perfluous salaries)  bachelors.  Generally  (for  they  had  not  much 
to  do)  persons  of  a  curious  and  speculative  turn  of  mind.  Old- 
fashioned,  for  a  reason  mentioned  before.  Humourists,  for  they 
were  of  all  descriptions ;  and,  not  having  been  brought  together 
in  early  life  (which  has  a  tendency  to  assimilate  the  members  of 
corporate  bodies  to  each  other),  but,  for  the  most  part,  placed  in 
this  house  in  ripe  or  middle  age,  they  necessarily  carried  into  it 
their  separate  habits  and  oddities,  unqualified,  if  I  may  so  speak, 
as  into  a  common  stock.  Hence  they  formed  a  sort  of  Noah's 
ark.  Odd  fishes.  A  lay-monastery.  Domestic  retainers  in  a 
great  house,  kept  more  for  show  than  use.  Yet  pleasant  fellows, 
full  of  chat — and  not  a  few  among  them  had  arrived  at  consider- 
able proficiency  on  the  German  flute. 

The  cashier  at  that  time  was  one  Evans,  a  Cambro-Briton.  He 
had  something  of  the  choleric  complexion  of  his  countrymen 
stamped  on  his  visage,  but  was  a  worthy  sensible  man  at  bottom. 


4  ELIA. 

He  wore  his  hair,  to  the  last,  powdered  and  frizzed  out,  in  the 
fashion  which  I  remember  to  have  seen  in  caricatures  of  what 
were  termed,  in  my  young  days,  Maccaronies.  He  was  the  last 
of  that  race  of  beaux.  Melancholy  as  a  gib-cat  over  his  counter 
all  the  forenoon,  I  think  I  see  him,  making  up  his  cash  (as  they 
call  it)  with  tremulous  fingers,  as  if  he  feared  every  one  about 
him  was  a  defaulter ;  in  his  hypochondry  ready  to  imagine  him- 
self  one  ;  haunted,  at  least,  with  the  idea  of  the  possibility  of  his 
becoming  one  ;  his  tristful  visage  clearing  up  a  little  over  his 
roast  neck  of  veal  at  Anderton's  at  two  (where  his  picture  still 
hangs,  taken  a  little  before  his  death,  by  desire  of  the  master  of 
the  coffee-house,  which  he  had  frequented  for  the  last  five-and- 
twenty  years),  but  not  attaining  the  meridian  of  its  animation  till 
evening  brought  on  the  hour  of  tea  and  visiting.  The  simulta- 
neous sound  of  his  welUknown  rap  at  the  door  with  the  stroke  of 
the  clock  announcing  six,  was  a  topic  of  never-failing  mirth  in 
the  families  which  this  dear  old  bachelor  gladdened  with  his 
presence.  Then  was  his  forte,  his  glorified  hour !  How  would 
he  chirp,  and  expand,  over  a  muffin  !  How  would  he  dilate  into 
secret  history !  His  countryman.  Pennant  himself,  in  particular, 
could  not  be  more  eloquent  than  he  in  relation  to  old  and  new 
London — the  site  of  old  theatres,  churches,  streets  gone  to 
decay — where  Rosamond's  Pond  stood — the  Mulberry-gardens 
— and  the  Conduit  in  Cheap — with  many  a  pleasant  anecdote, 
derived  from  paternal  tradition,  of  those  grotesque  figures  which 
Hogarth  has  immortalized  in  his  picture  of  Noon, — the  worthy 
descendants  of  those  heroic  confessors,  who,  flying  to  this  country, 
from  the  wrath  of  Louis  the  Fourteenth  and  his  dragoons,  kept 
alive  the  flame  of  pure  religion  in  the  sheltering  obscurities  of 
Hog-lane,  and  the  vicinity  of  the  Seven  Dials  ! 

Deputy,  under  Evans,  was  Thomas  Tame.  He  had  the  air 
and  stoop  of  a  nobleman.  You  would  have  taken  him  for  one, 
had  you  met  him  in  one  of  the  passages  leading  to  Westminster- 
hall.  By  stoop,  I  mean  that  gentle  bending  of  the  body  forwards, 
which,  in  great  men,  must  be  supposed  to  be  the  effect  of  an  ha- 
bitual condescending  attention  to  the  applications  of  their  inferiors. 
While  he  held  you  in  converse,  you  felt  strained  to  the  height  in 
the  colloquy.     The  conference  over,  you  were  at  leisure  to  smile 


THE   SOUTH-SEA  HOUSE. 


at  the  comparative  insignificance  of  the  pretensions  which  had 
just  awed  you.  His  intellect  was  of  the  shallowest  order.  It 
did  not  reach  to  a  saw  or  a  proverb.  His  mind  was  in  its  origi- 
nal state  of  white  paper.  A  sucking-babe  might  have  posed  him. 
What  was  it  then  ?  Was  he  rich  ?  Alas,  no  !  Thomas  Tame 
was  very  poor.  Both  he  and  his  wife  looked  outwardly  gentle- 
folks, when  I  fear  all  was  not  well  at  all  times  within.  She  had 
a  neat  meagre  person,  which  it  was  evident  she  had  not  sinned  in 
over-pampering;  but  in  its  veins  was  noble  blood.  She  traced 
her  descent,  by  some  labyrinth  of  relationship,  which  I  never 
thoroughly -understood, — much  less  can  explain  wi  h  any  heraldic 
certainty  at  this  time  of  day, — to  the  illustrious,  but  unfortunate 
house  of  Derwent water.  This  was  the  secret  of  Thomas's  stoop. 
This  was  the  thought — the  sentiment — the  bright  solitary  star  of 
your  lives, — ye  mild  and  happy  pair, — which  cheered  you  in  the 
night  of  intellect,  and  in  the  obscurity  of  your  station  !  This 
was  to  you  instead  of  riches,  instead  of  rank,  instead  of  glitter- 
ing attainments :  and  it  was  worth  them  altogether.  You  insult- 
ed none  with  it ;  but,  while  you  wore  it  as  a  piece  of  defensive 
armour  only,  no  insult  likewise  could  reach  you  through  it. 
Decus  et  solamen. 

Of  quite  another  stamp  was  the  then  accountant,  John  Tipp. 
He  neither  pretended  to  high  blood,  nor,  in  good  truth,  cared  one 
fig  about  the  matter.  He  "  thought  an  accountant  the  greatest 
character  in  the  world,  and  himself  the  greatest  accountant  in 
it."  Yet  John  was  not  without  his  hobby.  The  fiddle  relieved 
his  vacant  hours.  He  sang,  certainly,  with  other  notes  than  to 
the  Orphean  lyre.  He  did,  indeed,  scream  and  scrape  most  abom- 
inably. His  fine  suite  of  official  rooms  in  Threadneedle-street, 
which,  without  anything  very  substantial  appended  to  them,  were 
enough  to  enlarge  a  man's  notions  of  himself  that  lived  in  them, 
(I  know  not  who  is  the  occupier  of  them  now,)  resounded  fort- 
nightly to  the  notes  of  a  concert  of  "  sweet  breasts,"  as  our  an- 
cestors would  have  called  them,  culled  from  club-rooms  and  or- 
chestras— chorus  singers — first  and  second  violoncellos — double 
basses — and  clarionets — who  ate  his  cold  mutton,  and  drank  his 
punch,  and  praised  his  ear.  He  sate  like  Lord  Midas  among 
them.     But  at  the  desk  Tipp  was  quite  another  sort  of  creature. 


6  ELIA. 

Thence  all  ideas,  that  were  purely  ornamental,  were  banished. 
You  could  not  speak  of  anything  romantic  without  rebuke.  Pol- 
itics were  excluded.  A  newspaper  was  thought  too  refined  and 
abstracted.  The  whole  duty  of  man  consisted  in  writing  off  div- 
idend warrants.  The  striking  of  the  annual  balance  in  the  com- 
pany's books  (which,  perhaps,  differed  from  the  balance  of  lasl 
year  in  the  sum  of  25/.  Is.  6d.)  occupied  his  days  and  nights  foi 
a  month  previous-  Not  that  Tipp  was  blind  to  the  deadness  of 
things  (as  they  call  them  in  the  city)  in  his  beloved  house,  or  did 
not  sigh  for  a  return  of  the  old  stirring  days  when  South  Sea 
hopes  were  young — (he  was  indeed  equal  to  the  wielding  of  any 
the  most  intricate  accounts  of  the  most  flourishing  company  in 
these  or  those  days)  : — but  to  a  genuine  accountant  the  difference 
of  proceeds  is  as  nothing.  The  fractional  farthing  is  as  dear  to 
his  heart  as  the  thousands  which  stand  before  it.  He  is  the  true 
actor,  who,  whether  his  part  be  a  prince  or  a  peasant,  must  act  it 
with  like  intensity.  With  Tipp  form  was  everything.  His  life 
was  formal.  His  actions  seemed  ruled  with  a  ruler.  His  pen 
was  not  less  erring  than  his  heart.  He  made  the  best  executor 
in  the  world  ;  he  was  plagued  with  incessant  executorships  ac- 
cordingly, which  excited  his  spleen  and  soothed  his  vanity  in 
equal  ratios.  He  would  swear  (for  Tipp  swore)  at  the  little  or- 
phans, whose  rights  he  would  guard  with  a  tenacity  like  the  grasp 
of  the  dying  hand,  that  commended  their  interests  to  his  protec- 
tion. With  all  this  there  was  about  him  a  sort  of  timidity — (his 
few  enemies  used  to  give  it  a  worse  name) — a  sometliing  which, 
in  reverence  to  the  dead,  we  will  place,  if  you  please,  a  little  on 
this  side  of  the  heroic.  Nature  certainly  had  been  pleased  to 
endow  John  Tipp  with  a  sufficient  measure  of  the  principle  of 
self-preservation.  There  is  a  cowardice  which  we  do  not  de- 
spise, because  it  has  nothing  base  or  treacherous  in  its  elements  ; 
it  betrays  itself,  not  you :  it  is  mere  temperament ;  the  absence 
of  the  romantic  and  the  enterprising  ;  it  sees  a  lion  in  the  way, 
and  will  not,  with  Fortinbras,  "  greatly  find  quarrel  in  a  straw," 
when  some  supposed  honour  is  at  stake.  Tipp  never  mounted 
the  box  of  a  stage-coach  in  his  life  ;  or  leaned  against  the  rails 
of  a  balcony  ;  or  walked  upon  the  ridge  of  a  parapet ;  or  looked 
down  a  precipice ;  or  let  off  a  gun ;  or  went  upon  a  water-party ; 


THE   SOUTH-SEA  HOUSE. 


or  would  willingly  let  you  go,  if  he  could  have  helped  it :  neither 
was  it  recorded  of  him,  that  for  lucre,  or  for  intimidation,  he  ever 
forsook  friend  or  principle. 

Whom  next  shall  we  summon  from  the  dusty  dead,  in  whom 
common  qualities  become  uncommon  ?  Can  I  forget  thee,  Henry 
Man,  the  wit,  the  polished  man  of  letters,  the  author,  of  the  South 
Sea  House  ?  who  never  entered^it  thy  office  in  a  morning,  or  quit- 
tedst  it  in  mid-day — (what  didst  thou  in  an  office  ?) — without 
some  quirk  that  left  a  sting  !  Thy  gibes  and  thy  jokes  are  now 
extinct,  or  survive  but  in  two  forgotten  volumes,  which  I  had  tho 
good  fortune  to  rescue  from  a  stall  in  Barbican,  not  three  days 
ago,  and  found  thee  terse,  fresh,  epigrammatic,  as  alive.  Thy 
wit  is  a  little  gone  by  in  these  fastidious  days — thy  topics  are 
staled  by  the  "  new-born  gauds  "  of  the  time : — but  great  thou 
used  to  be  in  Public  Ledgers,  and  in  Chronicles,  upon  Chatham, 
and  Shelburne,  and  Rockingham,  and  Howe,  and  Burgoyne,  and 
Clinton,  and  the  war  which  ended  in  the  tearing  from  Great  Brit- 
ain her  rebellious  colonies, — and  Keppel,  and  Wilkes,  and  Saw- 
bridge,  and  Bull,  and  Dunning,  and  Pratt,  and  Richmond, — and 
such  small  politics. 

A  little  less  facetious,  and  a  great  deal  more  obstreperous,  was 
fine  rattling,  rattle-headed  Plumer.  He  was  descended, — not  in 
a  right  line,  reader,  (for  his  lineal  pretensions,  like  his  personal, 
favoured  a  little  of  the  sinister  bend,)  from  the  Plumers  of  Hert- 
fordshire. So  tradition  gave  him  out ;  and  certainly  family  fea- 
tures not  a  little  sanctioned  the  opinion.  Certainly  old  Walter 
Plumer  (his  reputed  author)  had  been  a  rake  in  his  days,  and 
visited  much  in  Italy,  and  had  seen  the  world.  He  was  uncle, 
bachelor-uncle  to  the  fine  old  whig  still  living,  who  has  represent- 
ed the  county  in  so  many  successive  parliaments,  and  has  a  fine 
old  mansion  near  Ware.  Walter  flourished  in  George  the  Sec- 
ond's days,  and  was  the  same  who  was  summoned  before  the 
House  of  Commons  about  a  business  of  franks,  with  the  old  Du- 
chess of  Marlborough.  You  may  read  of  it  in  Johnson's  Life  of 
Cave.  Cave  came  off  cleverly  in  that  business.  It  is  certain 
our  Plumer  did  nothing  to  discountenance  the  rumour.  He  rather 
seemed  pleased  whenever  it  was,  with  all  gentleness,  insinuated. 


8  ELIA. 

But,  besides  his  family  pretensions,  Plumer  was  an  engaging  fel- 
low, and  sang  gloriously. 

Not  so  sweetly  sang  Plumef  as  thou  sangest,  mild,  child-like, 

pastoral  M ;  a  fUite's  breathing  less  divinely  whispering  than 

thy  Arcadian  melodies,  when,  in  tones  worthy  of  Arden,  thou 
didst  chant  that  song  sung  by  Amiens  to  the  banished  Duke, 
which  proclaims  the  winter  wind  more  lenient  than  for  a  man  to 
be  ungrateful.  Thy  sire  was  old  surly  M ,  the  unapproach- 
able church-warden  of  Bishopsgate.  He  knew  not  what  he  did, 
when  he  begat  thee,  like  spring,  gentle  offspring  of  blustering 
winter  : — only  unfortunate  in  thy  ending,  which  should  have  been 
mild,  conciliatory,  swan-like. 

Much  remains  to  sing.  Many  fantastic  shapes  rise  up,  but 
they  must  be  mine  in  private : — already  have  I  fooled  the  readei 
to  the  top  "of  his  bent ; — else  could  I  omit  that  strange  creature 
Woollett,  who  existed  in  trying  the  question,  and  bought  litiga- 
tions ? — and  still  stranger,  inimitable,  solemn  Hep  worth,  from 
whose  gravity  Newton  might  have  deduced  the  law  of  gravita- 
tion. How  profoundly  would  he  nib  a  pen — with  what  delibera- 
tion would  he  wet  a  wafer  ! 

But  it  is  time  to  close — night's  wheels  are  rattling  fast  over 
me — it  is  proper  to  have  done  with  this  solemn  mockery. 

Reader,  what  if  I  have  been  playing  with  thee  all  this  while  ? 
— peradventure  the  very  names,  which  I  have  summoned  up  be- 
fore thee,  are  fantastic — insubstantial — like  Henry  Pimpernel, 
and  old  John  Naps  of  Greece  : 

Be  satisfied  that  something  answering  to  them  has  had  a  being. 
Their  importance  is  from  the  past. 


OXFORD  IN  THE  VACATION.  9 

b^ 


OXFORD  IN  THE  VACATION. 


Casting  a  preparatory  glance  at  the  bottom  of  this  article — as 
the  wary  connoisseur  in  prints,  with  cursory  eye,  (which,  while  it 
reads,  seems  as  though  it  read  not,)  never  fails  to  consult  the  quis 
sculpsit  in  the  corner,  before  he  pronounces  some  rare  piece  to  be 
a  Vivares,  or  a  WooUet methinks  I  hear  you  exclaim.  Read- 
er, Who  is  Elia  ? 

Because  in  my  last  I  tried  to  divert  thee  with  some  half-forgot- 
ten  humours  of  some  old  clerks  defunct,  in  an  old  house  of  busi- 
ness, long  since  gone  to  decay,  doubtless  you  have  already  set  me 

down  in  your  mind  as  one  of  the  self-same  college a  votary 

of  the  desk — a  notched  and  cropt  scrivener — one  that  sucks  his 
sustenance,  as  certain  sick  people  are  said  to  do,  through  a  quill. 

Well,  I  do  agnize  something  of  the  sort.  I  confess  that  it  is 
my  humour,  my  fancy — in  the  fore-part  of  the  day,  when  the 
mind  of  your  man  of  letters  requires  some  relaxation — (and  none 
better  than  such  as  at  first  sight  seems  most  abhorrent  from  his 
beloved  studies) — to  while  away  some  good  hours  of  my  time  in  the 
contemplation  of  indigos,  cottons,  raw  silks,  piece-goods,  flowered 
or  otherwise.  In  the  first  place  ****** 
and  then  it  sends  you  home  with  such  increased  appetite  to  your 
books  *  *  *  *  jjQi  ^Q  gay^  that  your  outside 
sheets,  and  waste  wrappers  of  foolscap,  do  receive  into  them,  most 
kindly  and  naturally,  the  impression  of  sonnets,  epigrams,  essays 
— so  that  the  very  parings  of  a  counting-house  are,  in  some  sort, 
the  settings  up  of  an  author.  The  enfranchised  quill,  that  has 
plodded  all  the  morning  among  the  cart-rucks  of  figures  and  ci- 
phers, frisks  and  curvets  so  at  its  ease  over  the  flowery  carpet- 
ground  of  a  midnight  dissertation. — It  feels  its  promotion. 
•***•"*■       So  that  you  see,  upon  the  whole,  the 


10  ELIA. 

literary  dignity  of  Ella  is  very  little,  if  at  all,  compromised  in 
the  condescension. 

Not  that,  in  my  anxious  detail  of  the  many  commodities  inci- 
dental to  the  life  of  a  public  office,  I  would  be  thought  blind  to 
certain  flaws,  which  a  cunning  carper  might  be  able  to  pick  in 
this  Joseph's  vest.  And  here  1  must  have  leave,  in  the  fulness  of 
my  soul,  to  regret  the  abolition,  and  doing-away-with  altogether, 
of  those  consolatory  interstices,  and  sprinklings  of  freedom, 
through  the  four  seasons, — the  red-letter  days,  now  become,  to  all 
intents  and  purposes,  dead-letter  days.  There  was  Paul,  and 
Stephen,  and  Barnabas — 

Andrew  and  John,  men  famous  in  old  times, 

— we  were  used  to  keep  all  their  days  holy,  as  long  back  as  I 
was  at  school  at  Christ's.  I  remember  their  effigies,  by  the  same 
token,  in  the  old  Basket  Prayer  Book.  There  hung  Peter  in  his 
uneasy  posture holy  Bartlemy  in  the  troublesome  act  of  flay- 
ing,  after  the  famous  Marsyas  by  Spagnoletti. 1  honoured 

them  all,  and  could  almost  have  wept  the  defalcation  of  Iscariot 
— so  much  did  we  love  to  keep  holy  memories  sacred  :— only  me- 
thought  I  a  little  grudged  at  the  coalition  of  the  better  Jude  with 
Simon — clubbing  (as  it  were)  their  sanctities  together,  to  make 
up  one  poor  gaudy-day  between  them — as  an  economy  unworthy 
of  the  dispensation. 

These  were  bright  visitations  in  a  scholar's  and  a  clerk's  life — 
"  far  oflT  their  coming  shone." — I  was  as  good  as  an  almanac  in 
those  days.  I  could  have  told  you  such  a  saint's-day  falls  out 
next  week,  or  the  week  after.  Peradventure  the  Epiphany,  by 
some  periodical  infelicity,  would,  once  in  six  years,  merge  in  a 
Sabbath.  Now  am  I  little  better  than  one  of  the  profane.  Let 
me  not  be  thought  to  arraign  the  wisdom  of  my  civil  superiors, 
who  have  judged  the  further  observation  of  these  holy  tides  to  be 
papistical,  superstitious.  Only  in  a  custom  of  such  long  stand- 
ing,  methinks,  if  their  Holinesses  the  Bishops  had,  in  decency,  been 

first  sounded but  I  am  wading  out  of  my  depths.     I  am  not 

the  man  to  decide  the  limits  of  civil  and  ecclesiastical  authority 
1  am  plain  Elia — no  Selden,  nor  Archbishop  Usher — though 


OXFORD  IN  THE  VACATION.  11 

at  present  in  the  thick  of  their  books,  here  in  the  heart  of  learn- 
ing, under  the  shadow  of  the  mighty  Bodley. 

I  can  here  play  the  gentleman,  enact  the  student.  To  such  a 
me  as  myself,  who  has  been  defrauded  in  his  young  years  of  the 
^weet  food  of  academic  institution,  nowhere  is  so  pleasant,  to 
while  away  a  few  idle  weeks  at,  as  one  or  other  of  the  Universi- 
ties. Their  vacation  too,  at  this  time  of  the  year,  falls  in  so  pat 
with  ours.  Here  I  can  take  my  walks  unmolested,  and  fancy 
myself  of  what  degree  or  standing  I  please.  I  seem  admitted  ad 
eundem.  I  fetch  up  past  opportunities.  I  can  rise  at  the  chapel- 
bell,  and  dream  that  it  rings  for  me.  In  moods  of  humility  I  can 
be  a  Sizar,  or  a  Servitor.  When  the  peacock  vein  rises,  I  strut 
a  Gentleman  Commoner.  In  graver  moments,  I  proceed  Master 
of  Arts.  Indeed  I  do  not  think  I  am  much  unlike  that  respecta- 
ble character.  I  have  seen  your  dim-eyed  vergers,  and  bed- 
makers  in  spectacles,  drop  a  bow  or  a  curtsy,  as  I  pass,  wisely 
mistaking  me  for  something  of  the  sort.  I  go  about  in  black, 
which  favours  the  notion.  Only  in  Christ  Church  reverend  quad- 
rangle, I  can  be  content  to  pass  for  nothing  short  of  a  Seraphic 
Doctor. 

The  walks  at  these  times  are  so  much  one's  own, — the  tall 
trees  of  Christ's,  the  groves  of  Magdalen  !  The  halls  deserted, 
and  with  open  doors  inviting  one  to  slip  in  unperceived,  and  pay 
a  devoir  to  some  Founder,  or  noble  or  royal  Benefactress  (that 
should  have  been  ours),  whose  portrait  seems  to  smile  upon  their 
over-looked  beadsman,  and  to  adopt  me  for  their  own.  Then, 
to  take  a  peep  in  by  the  way  at  the  butteries,  and  sculleries, 
redolent  of  antique  hospitality :  the  immense  caves  of  kitchens, 
kitchen  fire-places,  cordial  recesses ;  ovens  whose  first  pies  were 
baked  four  centuries  ago;  and  spits  which  have  cooked  for  Chau- 
cer !  Not  the  mpanest  minister  among  the  dishes  but  is  hallowed 
to  me  through  his  imagination,  and  the  Cook  goes  forth  a  Man- 
ciple. 

Antiquity  !  thou  wondrous  charm,  what  art  thou  ?  that,  being 
nothing,  art  everything  !  When  thou  wert,  thou  wert  not  anti- 
quity— then  thou  wert  nothing,  but  hadst  a  remoter  antiquity^  as 
thou  calledst  it,  to  look  back  to  with  blind  veneration  ;  thou  thy- 
self being  to  thyself  flat,  jejune,  modem  !     What  mystery  lurks 


12  ELIA. 

in  this  retroversion  ?  or  what  half  Januses*  are  we,  thai  CRnnot 
look  forward  with  the  same  idolatry  with  which  we  for  ever  re- 
vert !  The  mighty  future  is  as  nothing,  being  everything !  the 
past  is  everything,  being  nothing  ! 

What  were  thy  dark  ages  ?  Surely  the  sun  rose  as  brightly 
then  as  now,  and  man  got  him  to  his  work  in  the  morning.  Why 
is  it  we  can  never  hear  mention  of  them  without  an  accompany- 
ing feeling,  as  though  a  palpable  obscure  had  dimmed  the  face  of 
things,  and  that  our  ancestors  wandered  to  and  fro  groping ! 

Above  all  thy  rarities,  old  Oxenford,  what  do  most  arride  and 
solace  me,  are  thy  repositories  of  mouldering  learning,  thy 
shelves 

What  a  place  to  be  in  is  an  old  library  !  It  seems  as  though 
all  the  souls  of  all  the  writers,  that  have  bequeathed  their  labours 
to  these  Bodleians,  were  reposing  here,  as  in  some  dormitory,  or 
middle  state.  I  do  not  want  to  handle,  to  profane  the  leaves, 
their  winding-sheets.  I  could  as  soon  dislodge  a  shade.  I  seem 
to  inhale  learning,  walking  amid  their  foliage  ;  and  the  odour  of 
their  old  moth-scented  coverings  is  fragrant  as  the  first  bloom  of 
those  sciential  apples  which  grew  amid  the  happy  orchard. 

Still  less  have  I  curiosity  to  disturb  the  elder  repose  of  MSS. 
Those  varice,  lectiones,  so  tempting  to  the  more  erudite  palates,  do. 
but  disturb  and  unsettle  my  faith.  I  am  no  Herculanean  raker. 
The  credit  of  the  three  witnesses  might  have  slept  unimpeached 
for  me.  I  leave  these  curiosities  to  Person,  and  to  G.  D. —  whom, 
by  the  way,  I  found  busy  as  a  moth  over  some  rotten  archive, 
rummaged  out  of  some  seldom-explored  press,  in  a  nook  at  Oriel. 
With  long  poring,  he  is  grown  almost  into  a  book.  He  stood  as 
passive  as  one  by  the  side  of  the  old  shelves.  I  longed  to  new- 
coat  him  in  russia.  and  assign  him  his  place.  He  might  have 
mustered  for  a  tall  Scapula. 

D.  is  assiduous  in  his  visits  to  these  seats  of  learning.  No  in- 
considerable portion  of  his  moderate  fortune,  I  apprehend,  is  con- 
sumed in  journeys  between   them   and  ClifTord's-inn where, 

like  a  dove  on  the  asp's  nest,  he  has  long  taken  up  his  uncon- 
scious abode,  amid  an  incongruous  assembly  of  attorneys,  attor- 

*  Januses  of  one  face. — Sir  Thomas  Brown. 


OXFORD  IN  THE  VACATION.  13 

neys'  clerks,  apparitors,  promoters,  vermin  of  the  law,  among 
whom  he  sits  "  in  calm  and  sinless  peace."  The  fangs  of  the 
law  pierce  him  not — the  winds  of  litigation  blow  over  his  humble 
chambers — the  hard  sheriff's  officer  moves  his  hat  as  he  passes — 
legal  nor  illegal  discourtesy  touches  him — none  thinks  of  offering 
violence  or  injustice  to  him — you  would  as  soon  "  strike  an  ab- 
stract idea." 

D.  has  been  engaged,  he  tells  me,  through  a  course  of  labori- 
ous  years,  in  an  investigation  into  all  curious  matter  connected 
with  the  two  Universities ;  and  has  lately  lit  upon  a  MS.  collec- 
tion of  charters,  relative  to  C ,  by  which  he  hopes  to  settle 

some  disputed  points — particularly  that  long  controversy  between 
them  as  to  priority  of  foundation.  Tlie  ardour  with  which  he 
engages  in  these  liberal  pursuits,  I  am  afraid,  has  not  met  with 

all   the  encouragement  it   deserved,  either  here,  or  at  C . 

Your  caputs,  and  heads  of  colleges,  care  less  than  anybody  else 
about  these  questions. — Contented  to  suck  the  milky  fountains  of 
their  Alma  Maters,  without  inquiring  into  the  venerable  gentle- 
women's years,  they  rather  hold  such  curiosities  to  be  impertinent 
— unreverend.  They  have  their  good  glebe  lands  in  manu,  and 
care  not  much  to  rake  into  the  title  deeds.  I  gather  at  least  so 
much  from  other  sources,  for  D.  is  not  a  man  to  complain. 

D.  started  like  an  unbroke  heifer,  when  I  interrupted  him. 
A  priori  it  was  not  very  probable  that  we  should  have  met  in 
Oriel.  But  D.  would  have  done  the  same,  had  I  accosted  him  on 
the  sudden  in  his  own  walks  in  ClifTord's-inn,  or  in  the  Temple. 
In  addition  to  a  provoking  short-sightedness  (the  effect  of  late 
studies  and  watchings  at  the  midnight  oil)  D.  is  the  most  absent 
of  men.  He  made  a  call  the  other  morning  at  our  friend  M.'s  in 
Bedford-square;  and,  finding  nobody  at  home,  was  ushered  into 
the  hall,  where,  asking  for  pen  and  ink,  with  great  exactitude  of 
purpose  he  enters  me  his  name  in  the  book — which  ordinarily 
lies  about  in  such  places,  to  record  the  failures  of  the  untimely 
or  unfortunate  visitor — and  takes  his  leave  with  many  ceremonies, 
and  professions  of  regret.  Some  two  or  three  hours  after,  his 
walking  destinies  returned  him  into  the  same  neighbourhood  again, 
and  again  the  quiet  image  of  the  fire-side  circle  at  M.'s — Mrs. 
M.  presiding  at  it  like  a  Queen  Lar,  with  pretty  A.  S.  at  her 


14  ELIA. 

side — striking  irresistibly  on  his  fancy,  he  makes  another  call 
(forgetting  that  they  were  "certainly  not  to  return  from  the 
country  before  that  day  week"),  and  disappointed  a  second  time, 
inquires  for  pen  and  paper  as  before  :  again  the  book  is  brought, 
and  in  the  line  just  above  that  in  which  he  is  about  to  print  his 
second  name  (his  re-script) — his  first  name  (scarce  dry)  looks  out 
upon  him  like  anotlier  Sosia,  or  as  if  a  man  should  suddenly  en- 
counter his  own  duplicate  ! — The  effect  may  be  conceived.  D. 
made  many  a  good  resolution  against  any  such  lapses  in  future. 
I  hope  he  will  not  keep  them  too  rigorously. 

For  with  G.  D. — to  be  absent  from  the  body,  is  sometimes 
(not  to  speak  it  profanely)  to  be  present  with  the  Lord.  At  the 
very  time  when,  personally  encountering  thee,  he  passes  on  with 

no  recognition or,  being  stopped,  starts  like  a  thing  surprised 

— at  that  moment,  reader,  he  is  on  Mount  Tabor — or  Parnassus 
— or  co-sphered  with  Plato — or,  with  Harrington,  framing  "  im- 
mortal commonwealths" — devising  some  plan  of  amelioration  to 

thy  country,  or  thy  species perad venture  meditating  some 

individual  kindness  or  courtesy,  to  be  done  to  thee  thyself,  the  re- 
turning consciousness  of  which  made  him  to  start  so  guiltily  at 
thy  obtruded  personal  presence. 

D.  is  delightful  anywhere,  but  he  is  at  the  best  in  such  places 
as  these.  He  cares  not  much  for  Bath.  He  is  out  of  his  ele- 
ment at  Buxton,  at  Scarborough,  or  Harrowgate.  The  Cam  and 
the  Isis  are  to  him  "  better  than  all  the  waters  of  Damascus." 
On  the  Muses'  hill  he  is  happy,  and  good,  as  one  of  the  Shepherds 
on  the  Delectable  Mountains ;  and  when  he  goes  about  with  you 
to  show  you  the  halls  and  colleges,  you  think  you  have  with  you 
the  Interpreter  at  the  House  Beautiful. 


CHRIST'S  HOSPITAL  FIVE-AND-THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.    15 


CHRIST'S  HOSPITAL  FIVE-AND-THIRTY  TEARS  AGO. 


In  Mr.  Lamb's  *'  Works,"  published  a  year  or  two  since,  I 
find  a  magnificent  eulogy  on  my  old  school*,  such  as  it  was,  or 
now  appears  to  him  to  have  been,  between  the  years  1782  and 
1789.  It  happens  very  oddly,  that  my  own  standing  at  Christ's 
was  nearly  corresponding  with  his  ;  and,  with  all  gratitude  to 
him  for  his  enthusiasm  for  the  cloisters,  I  think  he  has  contrived 
to  bring  together  whatever  can  be  said  in  praise  of  them,  drop- 
ping all  the  other  side  of  the  argument  most  ingeniously. 

I  remember  L.  at  school ;  and  can  well  recollect  that  he  had 
some  peculiar  advantages,  which  I  and  others  of  his  schoolfellows 
had  not.  His  friends  lived  in  town,  and  were  near  at  hand ;  and 
he  had  the  privilege  of  going  to  see  ^hem,  almost  as  often  as  he 
wished,  through  some  invidious  distinction,  which  was  denied  to 
us.  The  present  worthy  sub-treasurer  to  the  Inner  Temple  can 
explain  how  that  happened.  He  had  his  tea  and  hot  rolls  in  a 
morning,  while  we  were  battening  upon  our  quarter  of  a  penny 
loaf — our  crug — moistened  with  attenuated  small  beer,  in  wooden 
piggins,  smacking  of  the  pitched  leathern  jack  it  was  poured 
from.  Our  Monday's  milk  porritch,  blue  and  tasteless,  and  the 
peas  soup  of  Saturday,  coarse  and  choking,  were  enriched  for 
him  with  a  slice  of  "  extraordinary  bread  and  butter,"  from  the 
hot-loaf  of  the  Temple.  The  Wednesday's  mess  of  millet,  some- 
what less  repugnant — (we  had  three  banyan  to  four  meat  days  in 
the  week) — was  endeared  to  his  palate  with  a  lump  of  double-re- 
fined, and  a  smack  of  ginger  (to  make  it  go  down  the  more  glibly) 
or  the  fragrant  cinnamon.  In  lieu  of  our  half-pickled  Sundays, 
or  quite  fresh  boiled  beef  on  Thursdays  (strong  as  caro  equina), 

*  Recollections  of  Christ's  Hospital. 


16  ELIA. 

with  detestable  marigolds  floating  in  the  pail  to  poison  the  broth — 
c^ir  scanty  mutton  scrags  on  Fridays — and  rather  more  savoury, 
but  grudging  portions  of  the  same  flesh,  rotten-roasted  or  rare,  on 
the  Tuesdays  (the  only  dish  which  excited  our  appetites,  and 
disappointed  our  stomachs,  in  almost  equal  proportion) — he  had 
his  hot  plate  of  roast  veal,  or  the  more  tempting  griskin  (exotics 
unknown  to  our  palates),  cooked  in  the  paternal  kitchen  (a  great 
thing),  and  brought  him  daily  by  his  maid  or  aunt !  I  remember 
the  good  old  relative  (in  whom  love  forbade  pride)  squatting  down 
upon  some  odd  stone  in  a  by-nook  of  the  cloisters,  disclosing  the 
viands  (of  higher  regale  than  those  cates  which  the  ravens  min- 
istered to  the  Tishbite)  ;  and  the  contending  passions  of  L.  at 
the  unfolding.  There  was  love  for  the  bringer ;  shame  for  the 
thing  brought,  and  the  manner  of  its  bringing ;  sympathy  for 
those  who  were  too  many  to  share  in  it ;  and,  at  the  top  of  all, 
hunger  (eldest,  strongest  of  the  passions  !)  predominant,  breaking 
down  the  stony  fences  of  shame,  and  awkwardness,  and  a  troub- 
ling over-consciousness. 

I  was  a  poor  friendless  boy.  My  parents,  and  those  who 
should  care  for  me,  were  far  away.  Those  few  acquaintances 
of  theirs,  which  they  could  reckon  upon  being  kind  to  me  in  the 
great  city,  after  a  little  forced  notice,  which  they  had  the  grace 
to  take  of  me  on  my  first  arrival  in  town,  soon  grew  tired  of  my 
holiday  visits.  They  seemed  to  them  to  recur  too  often,  though 
I  thought  them  few  enough ;  and,  one  after  another,  they  all  fail- 
ed me,  and  I  felt  myself  alone  among  six  hundred  playmates. 

O  the  cruelty  of  separating  a  poor  lad  from  his  early  home- 
stead !  The  yearnings  which  I  used  to  have  towards  it  in  those 
unfledged  years !  How,  in  my  dreams,  would  my  nativo  town 
(far  in  the  west)  come  back,  with  its  church,  and  trees,  and 
faces !  Hpw  I  would  wake  weeping,  and  in  the  anguish  of  my 
heart  exclaim  upon  sweet  Calme  in  Wiltshire  ! 

To  this  late  hour  of  my  life,  I  trace  impressions  left  by  the  rec- 
ollection of  those  friendless  holidays.  The  long  warm  days  of 
summer  never  return  but  they  bring  with  them  a  gloom  from  the 
haunting  memory  of  those  whole-day -leaves,  when,  by  some 
strange  arrangement,  we  were  turned  out,  for  the  Ih^e-long  day, 
upon  our  own  hands,  whether  we  had  friends  to  ga  to,  or  none. 


CHRIST'S  HOSPITAL  FIVE-AND-THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.    17 

I  remember  those  bathing  excursions  to  the  New-River,  which 
L.  recalls  with  such  relish,  better,  I  think,  than  he  can — for  he 
was  a  home-seeking  lad,  and  did  not  much  care  for  such  water- 
pastimes  : — How  merrily  we  would  sally  forth  into  the  fields ; 
and  strip  under  the  first  warmth  of  the  sun ;  and  wanton  like 
young  dace  in  the  streams  ;  getting  us  appetites  for  noon,  which 
those  of  us  that  were  pennyless  (our  scanty  morning  crust  long 
since  exhausted)  had  not  the  means  of  allaying — while  the  cattle, 
and  the  birds,  and  the  fishes,  were  at  feed  about  us  and  we 
had  nothing  to  satisfy  our  cravings — the  very  beauty  of  the 
day,  and  the  exercise  of  the  pastime,  and  the  sense  of  liberty, 
setting  a  keener  edge  upon  them! — How  faint  and  languid, 
finally,  we  would  return,  towards  night-fall,  to  our  desired  morsel, 
half- rejoicing,  h&lf-reluctant,  that  the  hours  of  our  uneasy  liberty 
had  expired  ! 

It  was  worse  in  the  days  of  winter,  to  go  prowling  about  the 
streets  objectless — shivering  at  cold  windows  of  print-shops,  to 
extract  a  little  amusement ;  or  haply,  as  a  last  resort  in  the  hopes 
of  a  little  novelty,  to  pay  a  fifty-times  repeated  visit  (where  our 
individual  faces  should  be  as  well  known  to  the  warden  as  those 
of  his  own  charges)  to  the  Lions  in  the  Tower — ^to  whose  levee, 
by  courtesy  immemorial,  we  had  a  prescriptive  title  to  admission. 

L.'s  governor  (so  we  called  the  patron  who  presented  us  to  the 
foundation)  lived  in  a  manner  under  his  paternal  roof  Any 
complaint  which  he  had  to  make  was  sure  of  being  attended  to. 
This  was  understood  at  Christ's,  and  was  an  effectual  screen  to 
him  against  the  severity  of  masters,  or  worse  tyranny  of  the 
monitors.  The  oppressions  of  these  young  brutes  are  heart-sick- 
ening to  call  to  recollection.  I  have  been  called  out  of  my  bed, 
and  waked  for  the  purpose,  in  the  coldest  winter  nights — and  this 
not  once,  but  night  after  night — in  my  shirt,  to  receive  the  disci- 
pline of  a  leathern  thong,  with  eleven  other  sufferers,  because  it 
pleased  my  callow  overseer,  when  there  has  been  any  talking 
heard  afler  we  were  gone  to  bed,  to  make  the  six  last  beds  in  the 
dormitory,  where  the  youngest  children  of  us  slept,  answerable 
for  an  offence  they  neither  dared  to  commit,  nor  had  the  power  to 
hinder.  Thei'same  execrable  tyranny  drove  the  younger  part  of 
us  from  the  fires,  when  our  feet  were  perishing  with  snow ;  and, 

PART  I.  3 


18  ELIA. 

under  the  crudest  penalties,  forbade  the  indulgence  of  a  drink 
of  water,  when  we  lay  in  sleepless  summer  nights,  fevered  with 
the  season,  and  the  day's  sports. 

There  was  one  H ,  who,  I  learned,  in  after  days,  was  seen 

expiating  some  maturer  offence  in  the  hulks.  (Do  I  flatter  my- 
self in  fancying  that  this  might  be  the  planter  of  that  name,  who 
suffered — at  Nevis,  I  think,  or  St.  Kitts, — some  few  years  since  ? 
My  friend  Tobin  was  the  benevolent  instrument  of  bringing  him 
to  the  gallows.)  This  petty  Nero  actually  branded  a  boy,  who 
had  offended  him,  with  a  red-hot  iron  ;  and  nearly  starved  forty 
o^'  us,  with  exacting  contributions,  to  the  one  half  of  our  bread, 
to  pamper  a  young  ass,  which,  incredible  as  it  may  seem,  with 
the  connivance  of  the  nurse's  daughter  (a  young  flame  of  his)  lie 
had  contrived  to  smuggle  in,  and  keep  upon  the  leads  of  the  ward, 
as  they  called  our  dormitories.  This  game  went  on  for  better 
than  a  week,  till  the  foolish  beast,  not  able  to  fare  well  but  he 
must  cry  roast  meat — happier  than  Caligula's  minion,  could  he 
have  kept  his  own  counsel — but,  foolisher,  alas !  than  any  of  his 
species  in  the  fables — waxing  fat,  and  kicking,  in  the  fulness  of 
bread,  one  unlucky  minute  would  needs  proclaim  his  good  fortune 
to  the  world  below  •  and,  laying  out  his  simple  throat,  blew  such 
a  ram's-horn  blast,  as  (toppling  down  the  walls  of  his  own  Jeri- 
cho) set  concealment  any  longer  at  defiance.  The  client  was  dis- 
missed, with  certain  attentions,  to  Smithfield  ;  but  I  never  under- 
stood that  the  patron  underwent  any  censure  on  the  occasion. 
This  was  in  the  stewardship  of  L.'s  admired  Perry. 

Under  the  same  facile  administration,  can  L.  have  forgotten 
the  cool  impunity  with  which  the  nurses  used  to  carry  away 
openly,  in  open  platters,  for  their  own  tables,  one  out  of  two  of 
every  hot  joint,  which  the  careful  matron  had  been  seeing  scru- 
pulously weighed  out  for  our  dinners  ?  These  things  were  daily 
practised  in  that  magnificent  apartment,  which  L.  (grown  con- 
noisseur since,  we  presume)  praises  so  highly  for  the  grand  paint- 
ings "  by  Verrio,  and  others,"  with  which  it  is  "  hung  round  and 
adorned."  But  the  sight  of  sleek  well-fed  blue-coat  boys  in  pic- 
tures was,  at  that  time,  I  believe,  little  consolatory  to  him,  or  us, 
the  living  ones,  who  saw  the  better  part  of  our  provisions  carried 


CHRIST'S  HOSPITAL  FIVE-AND-THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.    19 

away  before  our  faces  by  harpies  ;  and  ourselves  reduced  (with 
the  Trojan  in  the  Hall  of  Dido) 

To  feed  our  mind  with  idle  portraiture. 

L.  has  recorded  the  repugnance  of  the  school  to  gags,  or  the 
fat  of  fresh  beef  boiled  ;  and  sets  it  down  to  some  superstition. 
But  these  unctuous  morsels  are  never  grateful  to  young  palates 
(children  are  universally  fat-haters),  and  in  strong,  coarse,  boiled 
meats,  unsalted,  ace  detestable.  A  gag-eater  in  our  time  was 
equivalent  to  a  goule,  and  held  in  equal  detestation.  suf- 
fered under  the  imputation  : 


'Twas  said 


He  ate  strange  flesh. 

He  was  observed,  after  dinner,  carefully  to  gather  up  the  rem- 
nants left  at  his  table  (not  many,  nor  very  choice  fragments,  you 
may  credit  me, — and,  in  an  especial  manner,  these  disreputable 
morsels,  which  he  would  convey  away,  and  secretly  stow  in  the 
settle  that  stood  at  his  bedside.  None  saw  when  he  ate  them. 
It  was  rumoured  that  he  privately  devoured  them  in  the  night. 
He  was  watched,  but  no  traces  of  such  midnight  practices  were 
discoverable.  Some  reported,  that,  on  leave-days,  he  had  been 
seen  to  carry  out  of  the  bounds  a  large  blue  check  handkerchief, 
full  of  something.  This  then  must  be  the  accursed  thing.  Con- 
jecture next  was  at  work  to  imagine  how  he  could  dispose  of  it. 
Some  said  he  sold  it  to  the  beggars.  This  belief  generally  pre- 
vailed. He  went  about  moping.  None  spake  to  him.  No  one 
would  play  with  him.  He  was  excommunicated  ;  put  out  of  the 
pale  of  the  school.  He  was  too  powerful  a  boy  to  be  beaten,  but 
he  underwent  every  mode  of  that  negative  punishment,  which  is 
more  grievous  than  many  stripes.  Still  he  persevered.  At  length 
he  was  observed  by  two  of  his  school- fellows,  who  were  deter- 
mined to  get  at  the  secret,  and  had  traced  him  one  leave-day  for 
that  purpose,  to  enter  a  large  worn-out  building,  such  as  there 
exist  specimens  of  in  Chancery-lane,  which  are  let  out  to  various 
scales  of  pauperism,  with  open  door  and  a  common  staircase. 
After  him  they  silently  slunk  in,  and  followed  by  stealth  up  four 


20  ELIA. 

flights,  and  saw  him  tap  at  a  poor  wicket,  which  was  opened  by 
an  aged  woman,  meanly  clad.  Suspicion  was  now  ripened  into 
certainty.  The  informers  had  secured  their  victim.  They  had 
him  in  their  toils.  Accusation  was  formally  preferred,  and  retri- 
bution most  signal  was  looked  for.  Mr.  Hathaway,  the  then 
steward  (for  this  happened  a  little  after  my  time,)  with  that  pa- 
tient sagacity  which  tempered  all  his  conduct,  determined  to  in- 
vestigate the  matter,  before  he  proceeded  to  sentence.  The  result 
was,  that  the  supposed  mendicants,  the  receivers  or  purchasers 

of  the  mysterious  scraps,  turned  out  to  be  the  parents  of ,  an 

honest  couple  come  to  decay —  whom  this  seasonable  supply  had, 
in  all  probability,  saved  from  mendicancy ;  and  that  this  young 
stork,  at  the  expense  of  his  own  good  name,  had  all  this  while 
been  only  feeding  the  old  birds  ! — The  governors  on  this  occasion, 

much  to  their  honour,  voted  a  present  relief  to  the  family  of , 

and  presented  him  with  a  silver  medal.  The  lesson  which  the 
steward  read  upon  rash  judgment,  on  the  occasion  of  publicly 

delivering  the  medal  to ,  I  believe  would  not  be  lost  upon  his 

auditory. — I   had  left  school  then,   but  I  well  remember . 

He  was  a  tall,  shambling  youth,  with  a  cast  in  his  eye,  not  at  all 
calculated  to  conciliate  hostile  prejudices.  I  have  since  seen  him 
carrying  a  baker's  basket.  I  think  I  heard  he  did  not  do  quite  so 
well  by  himself,  as  he  had  done  by  the  old  folks. 

I  was  a  hypochondriac  lad  ;  and  the  sight  of  a  boy  in  fetters, 
upon  the  day  of  my  first  putting  on  the  blue  clothes,  was  not  ex- 
actly fitted  to  assuage  the  natural  terrors  of  initiation.  I  was  of 
tender  years,  barely  turned  of  seven  ;  and  had  only  read  of  such 
things  in  books,  or  seen  them  but  in  dreams.  I  was  told  he  had 
run  away.  This  was  the  punishment  for  the  first  offence. — As  a 
novice  I  was  soon  after  taken  to  see  the  dungeons.  These  were 
little,  square.  Bedlam  cells,  where  a  boy  could  just  lie  at  his 
length  upon  straw  and  a  blanket — a  mattress,  I  think,  was  after- 
wards substituted — with  a  peep  of  light,  let  in  askance,  from  a 
prison-orifice  at  top,  barely  enough  to  read  by.  Here  the  poor 
boy  was  locked  in  by  himself  all  day,  without  sight  of  any  but 
the  porter  who  brought  him  his  bread  and  water — who  might  not 
speak  to  him  ;  or  of  the  beadle,  who  came  twice  a  week  to  call 
him  out  to  receive  his  periodical  chastisement,  which  was  almost 


CHRISPS  HOSPITAL  FIVE-AND-THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.      ,21 

welcome,  because  it  separated  him  for  a  brief  interval  from  soli- 
t'jde  : — and  here  he  was  shut  up  by  himseU  of  m'ghts  out  of  the 
reach  of  any  sound,  to  suffer  whatever  horrors  the  weak  nerves, 
and  superstition  incident  to  his  time  of  life,  might  subject  him  to.* 
This  was  the  penalty  for  the  second  offence.  Wouldst  thou  like, 
reader,  to  see  what  became  of  him  in  the  next  degree  ? 

The  culprit,  who  had  been  a  third  time  an  offender,  and  whose 
expulsion  was  at  this  time  deemed  irreversible,  was  brought  forth, 
as  at  some  solemn  auto  dafe,  arrayed  in  uncouth  and  most  ap- 
palling attire — all  trace  of  his  late  "  watchet  weeds  "  carefully 
effaced,  he  was  exposed  in  a  jacket  resembling  those  which  Lon- 
don lamplighters  formerly  delighted  in,  with  a  cap  of  the  same. 
The  effect  of  this  divestiture  was  such  as  the  ingenious  devisers 
of  it  could  have  anticipated.  With  his  pale  and  frighted  features, 
it  was  as  if  some  of  those  disfigurements  in  Dante  had  seized 
upon  him.  In  this  disguisement  he  was  brought  into  the  hall 
y^L.^s favorite  state-room),  where  awaited  him  the  whole  number 
of  his  school- fellows,  whose  joint  lessons  and  sports  he  was  thence- 
forth to  share  no  more  ;  the  awful  presence  of  the  steward,  to  be 
seen  for  the  last  time  ;  of  the  executioner  beadle,  clad  in  his  stato 
robe  for  the  occasion  ;  and  of  two  faces  more,  of  direr  import, 
because  never  but  in  these  extremities  visible.  These  were 
governors  ;  two  of  whom  by  choice,  or  charter,  were  always  ac- 
customed to  officiate  at  these  Ultima  Supplicia  ;  not  to  mitigate 
(so  at  least  we  understood  it),  but  to  enforce  the  uttermost  stripe. 
Old  Bamber  Gascoigne,  and  Peter  Aubert,  I  remember,  were  col- 
leagues on  one  occasion,  when  the  beadle  turning  rather  pale  a 
glass  of  brandy  was  ordered  to  prepare  him  for  the  mysteries. 
The  scourging  was,  after  the  old  Roman  fashion,  long  and  stately. 
The  lictor  accompanied  the  criminal  quite  round  the  hall.  We 
were  generally  too  faint  with  attending  to  the  previous  disgusting 
circumstances,  to  make  accurate  report  with  our  eyes  of  the  de- 

*  One  or  two  instances  of  lunacy,  or  attempted  suicide,  accordingly,  at 
length  convinced  the  governors  of  the  impolicy  of  this  part  of  the  sentence, 
and  the  midnight  torture  to  the  spirits  was  dispensed  with. — This  fancy  of 
dungeons  for  children  was  a  sprout  of  Howard's  brain ;  for  which  (saving 
the  reverence  due  to  Holy  Paul)  methinks,  I  could  willingly  spit  upon  his 
■tatue. 


22  ELIA. 

gree  of  corporal  suffering  inflicted.  Report,  of  course,  gave  out 
the  back  knotty  and  livid.  After  scourging,  he  was  made  over, 
in  his  San  Benito,  to  his  friends,  if  he  had  any  (but  commonly 
such  poor  runagates  were  friendless),  or  to  his  parish-officer,  who, 
to  enhance  the  effect  of  the  scene,  had  his  station  allotted  to  him 
on  the  outside  of  the  hall  gate. 

These  solemn  pageantries  were  not  played  off  so  often  as  to 
spoil  the  general  mirth  of  the  community.  We  had  plenty  of 
exercise  and  recreation  after  school  hours ;  and,  for  myself,  I 
must  confess,  that  I  was  never  happier,  than  in  them.  The 
Upper  and  the  Lower  Grammar  School  were  held  in  the  same 
room  ;  and  an  imaginary  line  only  divided  their  bounds.  Their 
character  was  as  different  as  that  of  the  inhabitants  on  the  two 
sides  of  the  Pyrenees.  The  Rev.  James  Boyer  was  the  Upper 
Master  ;  but  the  Rev.  Matthew  Field  presided  over  that  portion 
of  the  apartment  of  which  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  a  member. 
We  lived  a  life  as  careless  as  birds.  We  talked  and  did  just 
what  we  pleased,  and  nobody  molested  us.  We  carried  an  acci- 
dence, or  a  grammar,  for  form :  but,  for  any  trouble  it  gave  us, 
we  might  take  two  years  in  getting  through  the  verbs  deponent, 
and  another  two  in  forgetting  all  that  we  had  learned  about  them. 
There  was  now  and  then  the  formality  of  saying  a  lesson,  but  if 
you  had  not  learned  it,  a  brush  across  the  shoulders  (just  enough 
to  disturb  a  fly)  was  the  sole  remonstrance.  Field  never  used 
the  rod  ;  and  in  truth  he  wielded  the  cane  with  no  great  good 
will — holding  it  "  like  a  dancer."  It  looked  in  his  hands  rather 
like  an  emblem  than  an  instrument  of  authority  ;  and  an  emblem, 
too,  he  was  ashamed  of.  He  was  a  good  easy  man,  that  did  not 
care  to  ruffle  his  own  peace,  nor  perhaps  set  any  great  conside- 
ration upon  the  value  of  juvenile  time.  He  came  among  us,  now 
and  then,  but  often  stayed  away  whole  days  from  us ;  and  when 
he  came  it  made  no  difference  to  us — he  had  his  private  room  to 
retire  too,  the  short  time  he  stayed,  to  be  out  of  the  sound  of  our 
noise.  Our  mirth  and  uproar  went  on.  We  had  classics  of  our 
own,  without  being  beholden  to  "  insolent  Greece  or  haughty 
Rome,"  that  passed  current  among  us — Peter  Wilkins — the  Ad- 
ventures of  the  Hon.  Captain  Robert  Boyle — the  Fortunate  Blue 
Coat  Boy — and  the  like.     Or  we  cultivated  a  turn  for  mechanic 


CHRIST'S  HOSPITAL  FIVE-AND-THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.       23 

and  scientific  operations ;  making  little  sun-dials  of  paper ;  or 
weaving  those  ingenious  parentheses  called  cat-cradles  ;  or  mak- 
ing dry  peas  to  dance  upon  the  end  of  a  tin  pipe  ;  or  studying  the 
art  military  over  the  laudable  game  "  French  and  English,"  and 
a  hundred  other  such  devices  to  pass  away  the  time — mixing  the 
useful  with  the  agreeable — as  would  have  made  the  souls  of 
Rousseau  and  John  Locke  chuckle  to  have  seen  us. 

Matthew  Field  belonged  to  that  class  of  modest  divines  who 
affect  to  mix  in  equal  proportion  the  gentleman,  the  scholar,  and 
the  Christian  ;  but,  I  know  not  how,  the  first  ingredient  is  gene- 
rally found  to  be  the  predominating  dose  in  the  composition.  He 
was  engaged  in  gay  parties,  or  with  his  courtly  bow  at  some 
episcopal  levee,  when  he  should  have  been  attending  upon  us. 
He  had  for  many  years  the  classical  charge  of  a  hundred  chil- 
dren, during  the  four  or  five  first  years  of  their  education  ;  and 
his  very  highest  form  seldom  proceeded  further  than  two  or  three 
of  the  introductory  fables  of  Phfedrus.  How  things  were  suffered 
to  go  on  thus  I  cannot  guess.  Boyer,  who  was  the  proper  person 
to  have  remedied  these  abuses,  always  affected,  perhaps  felt,  a 
delicacy  in  interfering  in  a  province  not  strictly  his  own.  I  have 
not  been  without  my  suspicions,  that  he  was  not  altogether  dis- 
pleased at  the  contrast  we  presented  to  his  end  of  the  school. 
We  were  a  sort  of  Helots  to  his  young  Spartans.  He  would 
sometimes,  with  ironic  deference,  send  to  borrow  a  rod  of  the 
Under  Master,  and  then,  with  Sardonic  grin,  observe  to  one  of 
his  upper  boys,  "  how  neat  and  fresh  the  twigs  looked."  While 
his  pale  students  were  battering  their  brains  over  Xenophon  and 
Plato,  with  a  silence  as  deep  as  that  enjoined  by  the  Samite,  we 
were  enjoying  ourselves  at  our  ease  in  our  little  Goshen.  We 
saw  a  little  into  the  secrets  of  his  discipline,  and  the  prospect  did 
but  the  more  reconcile  us  to  our  lot.  His  thunders  rolled  inno- 
cuous for  us  ;  his  storms  came  near,  but  never  touched  us  ;  con- 
trary to  Gideon's  miracle,  while  all  around  were  drenched,  our 
fleece  was  dry.*  His  boys  turned  out  the  better  scholars  ;  we,  I 
suspect,  have  the  advantage  in  temper.  His  pupils  cannot  speak 
of  him  without  something  of  terror  allaying  their  gratitude  ;  the 

*  Cowley. 


24  ELIA. 

remembrance  of  Field  comes  back  with  all  the  soothing  images 
of  indolence,  and  summer  slumbers,  and  work  like  play,  and  in- 
nocent idleness,  and  Elysian  exemptions,  and  life  itself  a  "  play- 
ing holiday." 

Though  sufficiently  removed  from  the  jurisdiction  of  Boyer,  we 
were  near  enough  (as  I  have  said)  to  understand  a  little  of  his 
system.  We  occasionally  heard  sounds  of  the  Ululantes,  and 
caught  glances  of  Tartarus.  B.  was  a  rabid  pedant.  His  Eng- 
lish style  was  crampt  to  barbarism.  His  Easter  anthems  (for  his 
duty  obliged  him  to  those  periodical  flights)  were  grating  as 
scrannel  pipes.* — He  would  laugh,  ay,  and  heartily,  but  then  it 

must  be  at  Flaccus's  quibble  about  Rex or  at  the  trislis  se- 

verilas  in  vultu,  or  inspicere  in  patinas,  of  Terence — thin  jests, 
which  at  their  first  broaching  could  hardly  have  had  vis  enough 
to  move  a  Roman  muscle. — He  had  two  wigs,  both  pedantic,  but 
of  different  omen.  The  one  serene,  smiling,  fresh-powdered,  be- 
tokening  a  mild  day.  The  other,  an  old,  discolored,  unkempt, 
angry  caxon,  denoting  frequent  and  bloody  execution.  Wo  to 
the  school,  when  he  made  his  morning  appearance  in  his  passy, 
or  passionate  wig.  No  comet  expounded  surer. — J.  B.  had  a 
heavy  hand.  I  have  known  him  double  his  knotty  fist  at  a  poor 
trembling  child  (the  maternal  milk  hardly  dry  upon  its  lips)  with  a 
"  Sirrah,  do  you  presume  to  set  your  wits  at  me  ?" — Nothing  was 
more  common  than  to  see  him  make  a  headlong  entry  into  the 
school-room,  from  his  inner  recess,  or  library,  and,  with  turbulent 
eye,  singling  out  a  lad,  roar  out,  "  Od's  my  life,  sirrah  "  (his 
favorite  adjuration),  "  I  have  a  greatmind  to  whip  you," — then, 
with  as  sudden  a  retracting  impulse,  fling  back  into  his  lair — and, 
after  a  cooling  lapse  of  some  minutes  (during  which  all  but  the 
culprit  had  totally  forgotten  the  context)  drive  headlong  out  again, 

*  In  this  and  everything  B.  was  the  antipodes  of  his  coadjutor.  While 
the  former  was  digging  his  brains  for  crude  anthems,  worth  a  pig-nut,  F. 
would  be  recreating  his  gentlemanly  fancy  in  the  more  flowery  walks  of  the 
Muses.  A  little  dramatic  effusion  of  his,  under  the  name  of  Vertumnus 
and  Pomona,  is  not  yet  forgotten  by  the  chroniclers  of  that  sort  of  literature. 
It  was  accepted  by  Garrick,  but  the  town  did  not  give  it  their  sanction. — B. 
used  to  say  of  it,  in  a  way  of  half-compliment,  half-irony,  that  itwas  too  clas- 
sical for  representation. 


CHRIST'S  HOSPITAL  FIVE-AND-THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.      25 

piecing  out  his  imperfect  sense,  as  if  it  had  been  some  Devil's 
Litany,  with  the  expletory  yell — ^^  and  I  will,  too." — In  his 
gentler  moods,  when  the  rabidus  furor  was  assuaged,  he  had  re- 
sort to  an  ingenious  method,  peculiar,  for  what  I  have  heard,  to 
himself,  of  whipping  the  boy,  and  reading  the  Debates,  at  the 
same  time ;  a  paragraph,  and  a  lash  between ;  which  in  those 
times,  when  parliamentary  oratory  was  most  at  a  height  and 
flourishing  in  these  realms,  was  not  calculated  to  impress  the 
patient  with  a  veneration  for  the  diffuser  graces  of  rhetoric. 

Once,  and  but  once,  the  uplifted  rod  was  known  to  fall  ineffec- 
tual from  his  hand — when  droll  squinting  W —  having  been  caught 
putting  the  inside  of  the  master's  desk  to  a  use  for  which  the 
architect  had  clearly  not  designed  it,  to  justify  himself,  with  great 
simplicity  averred,  that  he  did  not  know  that  the  thing  had  been  fore- 
warned. This  exquisite  irrecognition  of  any  law  antecedent  to 
the  oral  or  declaratory,  struck  so  irresistibly  upon  the  fancy  of  all 
who  heard  it  (the  pedagogue  himself  not  excepted) — ^that  remis- 
sion was  unavoidable. 

L.  has  given  credit  to  B.'s  great  merits  as  an  instructor.  Cole- 
ridge, in  his  literary  life,  has  pronounced  a  more  intelligible  and 
ample  encomium  on  them.  The  author  of  the  Country  Spectator 
doubts  not  to  compare  him  with  the  ablest  teachers  of  antiquity. 
Perhaps  we  cannot  dismiss  him  better  than  with  the  pious  ejacula- 
tion of  C,  when  he  heard  that  his  old  master  was  on  his  death- 
bed :  "  Poor  J.  B. ! — may  all  his  faults  be  forgiven  ;  and  may  he 
be  wafted  to  bliss  by  little  cherub  boys  all  head  and  wings,  with 
no  bottoms  to  reproach  his  sublunary  infirmities." 

Under  him  were  many  good  and  sound  scholars  bred. — First 
Grecian  of  my  time  was  Lancelot  Pepys  Stevens,  kindest  of  boys 
and  men,  since  Co-grammar-master  (and  inseparable  companion) 

with  Dr.  T e.     What  an  edifying  spectacle  did  this  brace  of 

friends  present  to  those  who  remembered  the  anti-socialities  of 
their  predecessors ! — ^You  never  met  the  one  by  chance  in  the 
street  without  a  wonder,  which  was  quickly  dissipated  by  the 
almost  immediate  sub-appearance  of  the  other.  Generally  arm- 
in-arm,  these  kindly  coadjutors  lightened  for  each  other  the  toil- 
some duties  of  their  profession,  and  when,  in  advanced  age,  one 
found  it  convenient  to  retire,  the  other  was  notions  in  discovering 


26  ELIA. 

that  it  suited  him  to  lay  down  the  fasces  also.  Oh,  it  is  pleasant, 
as  it  is  rare,  to  find  the  same  arm  linked  in  yours  at  forty,  which 
at  thirteen  helped  it  to  turn  over  the  Cicero  de  Amiciiia,  or  some 
tale  of  Antique  Friendship,  which  the  young  heart  even  then  was 

burning  to  anticipate  ! — Co-Grecian  with  S.  was  Th ,who  has 

since  executed  with  ability  various  diplomatic   functions  at  the 

Northern  courts.     Th was  a   tall,  dark,   saturnine  youth, 

sparing  of  speech,  with  raven  locks. — Thomas  Fanshaw  Middle- 
ton  followed  him  (now  Bishop  of  Calcutta),  a  scholar  and  a  gen- 
tleman in  his  teens.  He  has  the  reputation  of  an  excellent  critic ; 
and  is  author  (besides  the  Country  Spectator)  of  a  Treatise  on 
the  Greek  Article,  against  Sharpe.  M.  is  said  to  bear  his  mitre 
high  in  India,  where  the  regni  novitas  (I  dare  say)  sufficiently 
justifies  the  bearing.  A  humility  quite  as  primitive  as  that  of 
Jewel  or  Hooker  might  not  be  exactly  fitted  to  impress  the  minds 
of  those  Anglo-Asiatic  diocesans  with  a  reverence  for  home  insti- 
tutions, and  the  church  which  those  fathers  watered.  The  man- 
ners of  M.  at  school,  though  firm,  were  mild  and  unassuming. — 
Next  to  M.  (if  not  senior  to  him)  was  Richards,  author  of  the 
Aboriginal  Britons,  the  most  spirited  of  the  Oxford  Prize  Poems ; 

a  pale,  studious  Grecian. — Then  followed  poor  S ,  ill-fated 

M !  of  these  the  Muse  is  silent. 

Finding  some  of  Edward's  race 
Unhappy,  pass  their  annals  by. 

Come  back  into  memory,  like  as  thou  wert  in  the  day-spring 
of  thy  fancies,  with  hope  like  a  fiery  column  before  thee — the 
dark  pillar  not  yet  turned — Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge — Logician, 
Metaphysician,  Bard ! — How  have  I  seen  the  casual  passer 
through  the  Cloisters  stand  still,  entranced  with  admiration  (while 
he  weighed  the  disproportion  between  the  speech  and  the  garl  of 
the  young  Mirandula),  to  hear  thee  unfold,  in  thy  deep  and  sweet 
intonations,  the  mysteries  of  Jamblichus,  or  Plotinus  (for  even  in 
those  years  thou  waxedst  not  pale  at  such  philosophic  draughts), 

or  reciting  Homer  in  his  Greek,  or  Pindar while  the  walls  of 

the  old  Grey  Friars  re-echoed  to  the  accents  of  the  inspired 
charity-hoy  ! — Many  were  the  "  wit  combats"  (to  dally  awhile 
with  the  words  of  old  Fuller)  between  him  and  C.  V.  Le  G , 


CHRIST'S  HOSPITAL  FIVE-AND-THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.      27 

"  which  two  I  behold  like  a  Spanish  great  galleon,  and  an  Eng- 
lish man  of  war  ;  Master  Coleridge,  like  the  former,  was  built 
far  higher  in  learning,  solid,  but  slow  in  his  performances.  C. 
V.  L.,  with  the  English  man  of  war,  lesser  in  bulk,  but  lighter 
in  sailing,  could  turn  with  all  tides,  tack  about,  and  take  advan- 
tage of  all  winds,  by  the  quickness  of  his  wit  and  invention." 

Nor  shalt  thou,  their  compeer,  be  quickly  forgotten,  Allen,  with 
the  cordial  smile,  and  still  more  cordial  laugh,  with  which  thou 
wert  wont  to  make  the  old  Cloisters  shake,  in  thy  cognition  of 
some  poignant  jest  of  theirs ;  or  the  anticipation  of  some  more 
material,  and  peradventure  practical  one,  of  thine  own.  Extinct 
are  those  smiles,  with  that  beautiful  countenance,  with  which  (for 
thou  wert  the  Nireus  fonnosus  of  the  school),  in  the  days  of  thy 
maturer  waggery,  thou  didst  disarm  the  wrath  of  infuriated  town- 
damsel,  who,  incensed  by  provoking  pinch,  turning  tigress-like 
round,  suddenly  converted  by  thy  angel  look,  exchanged  the  half- 
formed  terrible  "  hi ,"  for  a  gentler  greeting — "  bless  thy  hand- 
some face  P^ 

Next  follow  two,  who  ought  to  be  now  alive,  and  the  friends  of 

Elia — the  junior  Le  Gr and  F ;  who  impelled,  the  former 

by  a  roving  temper,  the  latter  by  too  quick  a  sense  of  neglect — 
ill  capable  of  enduring  the  slights  poor  Sizars  are  sometimes  sub- 
ject to  in  our  seats  of  learning — exchanged  their  Alma  Mater  for 
the  camp ;  perishing,  one  by  climate,  and  one  on  the  plains  of 

Salamanca  ;  —  Le    G ,    sanguine,    volatile,    sweet-natured  ; 

F dogged,  faithful,  anticipative  of  insult,  warm-hearted,  with 

something  of  the  old  Roman  height  about  him. 

Fine,  frank-hearted  Fr ,  the  present  master  of  Hertford, 

with  Marmaduke  T ,  mildest  of  Missionaries — and  both  my 

good  friends  still — close  the  catalogue  of  Gieciaiis  in  my  time. 


38  ELIA. 


THE  TWO  RACES  OF  MEN 


The  human  species,  according  to  the  best  theory  I  can  form  of  it, 
is  composed  of  two  distinct  races,  the  men  who  borrow,  and  the 
men  who  lend.  To  these  two  original  diversities  may  be  reduced 
all  those  impertinent  classifications  of  Gothic  and  Celtic  tribes, 
white  men,  black  men,  red  men.  All  the  dwellers  upon  earth, 
"  Parthians,  and  Medes,  and  Elamites,"  flock  hither,  and  do  na- 
turally fall  in  with  one  or  other  of  these  primary  distinctions. 
The  infinite  superiority  of  the  former,  which  I  choose  to  designate 
as  the  great  race,  is  discernible  in  their  figure,  port,  and  a  certain 
instinctive  sovereignty.  The  latter  are  born  degraded.  "He 
shall  serve  his  brethren."  There  is  something  in  the  air  of  one 
of  this  cast,  lean  and  suspicious ;  contrasting  with  the  open,  trust- 
ing, generous  manners  of  the  other. 

Observe  who  have  been  the  greatest  borrowers  of  all  ages — 
Alcibiades — FalstafT — Sir  Richard  Steele— our  late  incomparable 
Brinsley — what  a  family  likeness  in  all  four ! 

What  a  careless,  even  deportment  hath  your  borrower!  what 
rosy  gills  !  what  a  beautiful  reliance  on  Providence  doth  he  mani- 
fest,— ^taking  no  more  thought  than  lilies !  What  contempt  for 
money, — accounting  it  (yours  and  mine  especially)  no  better  than 
dross  !  What  a  liberal  confounding  of  those  pedantic  distinctions 
of  meum  and  tuum  f  or  rather,  what  a  noble  simplification  of  lan- 
guage (beyond  Tooke),  resolving  these  supposed  opposites  into  one 
clear,  intelligible  pronoun  adjective  ! — What  near  approaches  doth 
he  make  to  the  primitive  community, — to  the  extent  of  one  half  of 
the  principle  at  least. 

He  is  the  true  taxer  who  "  calleth  all  the  world  up  to  be  taxed  ;'* 


THE  TWO  RACES  OF  MEN.  29 

and  the  distance  is  as  vast  between  him  and  one  of  us,  as  subsisted 
between  the  Augustan  Majesty  and  the  poorest  obolary  Jew  that 
paid  it  tribute-pittance  at  Jerusalem ! — His  exactions,  too,  have 
such  a  cheerful,  voluntary  air  !  So  far  removed  from  your  sour 
parochial  or  state-gatherers, — those  ink-horn  varlets,  who  carry 
their  want  of  welcome  in  their  faces !  He  comelh  to  you  with  a 
smile,  and  troubleth  you  with  no  receipt ;  confining  himself  to  no 
set  season.  Every  day  is  his  Candlemas,  or  his  Feast  of  Holy 
Michael.  He  applieth  the  lene  tormentum  of  a  pleasant  look  to 
your  purse, — which  to  that  gentle  warmth  expands  her  silken 
leaves,  as  naturally  as  the  cloak  of  the  traveller,  for  which  sun 
and  wind  contended !  He  is  the  true  Propontic  which  never 
ebbeth !  The  sea  which  taketh  handsomely  at  each  man's  hand. 
In  vain  the  victim,  whom  he  delighteth  to  honor,  struggles  with 
destiny ;  he  is  in  the  net.  Lend  therefore  cheerfully,  O  man, 
ordained  to  lend — that  thou  lose  not  in  the  end,  with  thy  worldly 
penny,  the  reversion  promised.  Combine  not  preposterously  in 
thine  own  person  the  penalties  of  Lazarus  and  of  Dives  ! — but, 
when  thou  seest  the  proper  authority  coming,  meet  it  smilingly, 
as  it  were  half-way.  Come,  a  handsome  sacrifice !  See  how 
light  he  makes  of  it !  Strain  not  courtesies  with  a  noble  enemy. 
Reflections  like  the  foregoing  were  forced  upon  my  mind  by  the 
death  of  my  old  friend,  Ralph  Bigod,  Esq.,  who  parted  this  life, 
on  Wednesday  evening ;  dying,  as  he  had  lived,  without  much 
trouble.  He  boasted  himself  a  descendent  from  mighty  ancestors 
of  that  name,  who  heretofore  held  ducal  dignities  in  this  realm. 
In  his  actions  and  sentiments  he  belied  not  the  stock  to  which  he 
pretended.  Early  in  life  he  found  himself  invested  with  ample 
revenues  ;  which,  with  that  noble  disinterestedness  which  I  have 
noticed  as  inherent  in  men  of  the  great  race,  he  took  almost  im- 
mediate measures  entirely  to  dissipate  and  bring  to  nothing  :  for 
there  is  something  revolting  in  the  idea  of  a  king  holding  a  pri- 
vate purse;  and  the  thoughts  of  Bigod  were  all  regal.  Thus 
furnished  by  the  very  act  of  disfurnishment ;  getting  rid  of  the 
cumbersome  luggage  of  riches,  more  apt  (as  one  sings) 

To  slacken  virtue,  and  abate  her  edge, 

Than  prompt  her  to  do  aught  may  merit  praise. 


30  ELIA. 

he  set  forth,  like  some  Alexander,  upon  his  great  enterprise,  "  bor- 
rowing and  to  borrow !" 

In  his  periegesis,  or  triumphant  progress  throughout  this  island, 
it  has  been  calculated  that  he  laid  a  tythe  part  of  the  inhabitants 
under  contribution.  I  reject  this  estimate  as  greatly  exagge- 
rated :  but  having  had  the  honor  of  accompanying  my  friend 
divers  times,  in  his  perambulations  about  this  vast  city,  I  own  I 
was  greatly  struck  at  first  with  the  prodigious  number  of  faces 
we  met,  who  claimed  a  sort  of  respectful  acquaintance  with  us. 
He  was  one  day  so  obliging  as  to  explain  the  phenomenon.  It 
seems,  these  were  his  tributaries ;  feeders  of  his  exchequer ; 
gentlemen,  his  good  friends  (as  he  was  pleased  to  express  him- 
self), to  whom  he  had  occasionally  been  beholden  for  a  loan. 
Their  multitudes  did  no  way  disconcert  him.  He  rather  took  a 
pride  in  numbering  them ;  and,  with  Comus,  seemed  pleased  to 
be  "  stocked  with  so  fair  a  herd." 

With  such  sources,  it  was  a  wonder  how  he  contrived  to  keep 
his  treasury  always  empty.  He  did  it  by  force  of  an  aphorism, 
which  he  had  often  in  his  mouth,  that  "  money  kept  longer  than 
three  days  stinks."  So  he  made  use  of  it  while  it  was  fresh. 
A  good  part  he  drank  away  (for  he  was  an  excellent  toss-pot) ; 
some  he  gave  away,  the  rest  he  threw  away,  literally  tossing  and 
hurling  it  violently  from  him — as  boys  do  burrs,  or  as  if  it  had 
been  infectious, — into  ponds,  or  ditches,  or  deep  holes,  inscrutable 
cavities  of  the  earth ; — or  he  would  bury  it  (where  he  would 
never  seek  it  again)  by  a  river's  side  under  some  bank,  which  (he 
would  facetiously  observe)  paid  no  interest — but  out  away  from 
him  it  must  go  peremptorily,  as  Hagar's  offspring  into  the  wilder- 
ness, while  it  was  sweet.  He  never  missed  it.  The  streams 
were  perennial  which  fed  his  fisc.  When  new  supplies  became 
necessary,  the  first  person  that  had  the  felicity  to  fall  in  with 
him,  friend  or  stranger,  was  sure  to  contribute  to  the  deficiency. 
For  Bigod  had  an  undeniable  way  with  him.  He  had  a  cheerful, 
open  exterior,  a  quick  jovial  eye,  a  bald  forehead,  just  touched 
with  grey  {cana  fides).  He  anticipated  'no  excuse,  and  found 
none.  And,  waiving  for  a  while  my  theory  as  to  the  great  race, 
I  would  put  it  to  the  most  untheorising  reader,  who  may  at  times 
have  disposable  coin  in  his  pocket,  whether  it  is  not  more  repug- 


THE  TWO  RACES  OF  MEN,  31 

nant  to  the  kindliness  of  his  nature  to  refuse  such  a  one  as  I  am 
describing,  than  to  say  tio  to  a  poor  petitionary  rogue  (your  bas- 
tard borrower),  who,  by  his  mumping  visnomy,  tells  you,  that  he 
expects  nothing  better  ;  and,  therefore,  whose  preconceived  notions 
and  expectations  you  do  in  reality  so  much  less  shock  in  the 
refusal. 

"When  I  think  of  this  man ;  his  fiery  glow  of  heart ;  his  swell 
of  feeling ;  how  magnificent,  how  ideal  he  was ;  how  great  at 
the  midnight  hour ;  and  when  I  compare  with  him  the  compa- 
nions with  whom  I  have  associated  since,  I  grudge  the  saving  of 
a  few  idle  ducats,  and  think  that  I  am  fallen  into  the  society  of 
lenders,  and  little  men. 

To  one  like  Elia,  whose  treasures  are  rather  cased  in  leather 
covers  than  closed  in  iron  coffers,  there  is  a  class  of  alienators 
more  formidable  than  that  which  J  have  touched  upon ;  I  mean 
your  borrowers  of  books — those  mutilators  of  collections,  spoilers 
of  the  symmetry  of  shelves,  and  creators  of  odd  volumes.  There 
is  Comberbatch,  matchless  in  his  depredations  ! 

That  foul  gap  in  the  bottom  shelf  facing  you,  like  a  great  eye- 
tooth  knocked  out — (y/)u  are  now  with  me  in  my  little  back  study 

in  Bloomsbury,  reader !) with  the  huge  Switzer-like  tomes  on 

each  side  (like  the  Guild-hall  giants,  in  their  reformed  posture, 
guardant  of  nothing)  once  held  the  tallest  of  my  folios,  Opera 
BonaventurcE,  choice  and  massy  divinity,  to  which  its  two  sup- 
porters (school  divinity  also,  but  of  a  lesser  calibre, — Bellarmine, 
and  Holy  Thomas),  showed  but  as  dwarfs, — itself  an  Ascapart ! — 
that  Comberbatch  abstracted  upon  the  faith  of  a  theory  he  holds, 
which  is  more  easy,  I  confess,  for  me  to  suffer  by  than  to  refute, 
namely,  that  "  the  title  to  property  in  a  book  (my  Bonaventure, 
for  instance),  is  in  exact  ratio  to  the  claimant's  powers  of  under- 
standing and  appreciating  the  same."  Should  he  go  on  acting 
upon  this  theory,  which  of  our  shelves  is  safe  ? 

The  slight  vacuum  in  the  left-hand  case — two  shelves  from  the 
ceiling — scarcely  distinguishable  but  by  the  quick  eye  of  a  loser — 
was  whilom  the  commodious  resting-place  of  Brown  on  Urn 
Burial.  C.  will  hardly  allege  that  he  knows  more  about  that 
treatise  than  I  do,  who  introduced  it  to  him,  and  was  indeed  the 
first  (of  the  moderns)  to  discover  its  beauties — but  so  have  I 


32  ELIA. 

known  a  foolish  lover  to  praise  his  mistress  in  the  presence  of  a 
rival  more  qualified  to  carry  her  off  than  himself.  Just  below, 
Dodsley's  dramas  want  their  fourth  volume,  where  Vittoria  Co- 
rombona  is  !  The  remainder  nine  are  as  distasteful  as  Priam's 
refuse  sons,  when  the  Fates  lorrowed  Hector.  Here  stood  the 
Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  in  sober  state.  There  loitered  the 
Complete  Angler ;  quiet  as  in  life,  by  some  stream  side.  In  yon- 
der nook,  John  Buncle,  a  widower-volume,  with  "  eyes  closed," 
mourns  his  ravished  mate. 

Qne  justice  I  must  do  my  friend,  that  if  he  sometimes,  like  the 
sea,  sweeps  away  a  treasure,  at  another  time,  sea-like,  he  throws 
up  as  rich  an  equivalent  to  match  it.  I  have  a  small  under-col- 
lection  of  this  nature  (my  friend's  gatherings  in  his  various  calls), 
picked  up,  he  has  forgotten  at  what  odd  places,  and  deposited 
with  as  little  memory  at  mine.  I  take  in  these  orphans,  the 
twice-deserted.  These  proselytes  of  the  gate  are  welcome  as  the 
true  Hebrews.  There  they  stand  in  conjunction ;  natives,  and 
naturalized.  The  latter  seem  as  little  disposed  to  inquire  out 
their  true  lineage  as  I  am.  I  charge  no  warehouse- room  for 
these  deodands,  nor  shall  ever  put  myself  to  the  ungentlemanly 
trouble  of  advertising  a  sale  of  them  to  pay  expenses. 

To  lose  a  volume  to  C.  carries  some  sense  and  meaning  in  it. 
You  are  sure  that  he  will  make  one  hearty  meal  on  your  viands, 
if  he  can  give  no  account  of  the  platter  after  it.  But  what 
moved  thee,  wayward,  spiteful  K.,  to  be  so  importunate  to  carry 
off  with  thee,  in  spite  of  tears  and  adjurations  to  thee  to  forbear, 
the  Letters  of  that  princely  woman,  the  thrice  noble  Margaret 
Newcastle  ? — knowing  at  the  time,  and  knowing  that  I  knew 
also,  thou  most  assuredly  wouldst  never  turn  over  one  leaf  of  the 
illustrious  folio : — what  but  the  mere  spirit  of  contradiction,  and 
childish  love  of  getting  the  better  of  thy  friend  ?  Then,  worst 
cut  of  all !  to  transport  it  with  thee  to  the  Gallican  land — 

Unworthy  land  to  harbor  such  a  sweetness, 

A  virtue  in  which  all  ennobling  thoughts  dwelt. 

Pure  thoughts,  kind  thoughts,  high  thoughts,  her  sex's  wonder  ! 

hadst  thou  not  thy  play-books,  and  books  of  jests  and  fancies, 
about  thee,  to  keep  thee  merry,  even  as  thou  keepest  all  compa- 


THE  TWO  RACES  OF  MEN.  33 

Dies  with  thy  quips  and  mirthful  tales  ?  Child  of  the  Green- 
room, it  was  unkindly  done  of  thee.  Thy  wife,  too,  that  part- 
French,  better-part  English- woman  ! — that  she  could  fix  upon  no 
other  treatise  to  bear  away,  in  kindly  token  of  remembering  us, 
than  the  works  of  Fulke  Greville,  Lord  Brook — of  which  no 
Frenchman,  nor  woman  of  France,  Italy,  or  England,  was  ever 
by  nature  constituted  to  comprehend  a  tittle  ! — Was  there  not  Zim- 
merman on  Solitude  ? 

Reader,  if  haply  thou  art  blessed  with  a  moderate  collection, 
be  shy  of  showing  it ;  or  if  thy  heart  overfloweth  to  lend  them, 
lend  thy  books  ;  but  let  it  be  to  such  a  one  as  S.  T.  C. — he  will 
return  them  (generally  anticipating  the  time  appointed)  with 
usury ;  enriched  with  annotations  tripling  their  value.  I  have 
had  experience.  Many  are  these  precious  MSS.  of  his — (in 
matter  oftentimes,  and  almost  in  quantity  not  unfrequently,  vying 
with  the  originals)  in  no  very  clerkly  hand — legible  in  my 
Daniel ;  in  old  Burton ;  in  Sir  Thomas  Browne ;  and  those  ab- 
struser  cogitations  of  the  Greville,  now,  alas !  wandering  in 
Pagan  lands.  I  counsel  thee,  shut  not  thy  heart,  nor  thy  library, 
against  S.  T.  C. 

PART  I  4 


34  ELIA. 


NEW  YEAR'S  EVE 


Every  man  hath  two  birth-days :  two  days,  at  least,  in  every  year, 
which  set  him  upon  revolving  the  lapse  of  time,  as  it  affects  his 
mortal  duration.  The  one  is  that  which  in  an  especial  manner 
he  termeth  his.  In  the  gradual  desuetude  of  old  observances, 
this  custom  of  solemnizing  our  proper  birth-day  hath  nearly 
passed  away,  or  is  left  to  children,  who  reflect  nothing  at  all  about 
the  matter,  nor  understand  anything  in  it  beyond  cake  and  orange. 
But  the  birth  of  a  New  Year  is  of  an  interest  too  wide  to  be  pre- 
termitted by  king  or  cobbler.  No  one  ever  regarded  the  first  of 
January  with  indifference.  It  is  that  from  which  all  date  their 
time,  and  count  upon  what  is  left.  It  is  the  nativity  of  our  com- 
mon Adam. 

Of  all  sound  of  all  bells — (bells,  th  i  music  nighest  bordering 
upon  heaven) — most  solemn  and  touching  is  the  peal  which  rings 
out  the  Old  Year.  I  never  hear  it  without  a  gathering-up  of  my 
mind  to  a  concentration  of  all  the  images  that  have  been  diffused 
over  the  past  twelvemonth  ;  all  I  have  done  or  suffered,  perform- 
ed or  neglected — in  that  regretted  time.  I  begin  to  know  its 
worth,  as  when  a  person  dies.  It  takes  a  personal  color ;  nor 
was  it  a  poetical  flight  in  a  contemporary,  when  he  exclaimed, 

I  saw  the  skirts  of  the  departing  Year. 

It  is  no  more  than  what  in  sober  sadness  every  one  of  us  seems 
to  be  conscious  of,  in  that  awful  leave-taking.  I  am  sure  I  felt  it, 
and  all  felt  it  with  me,  last  night ;  though  some  of  my  companions 
affected  rather  to  manifest  an  exhilaration  at  the  birth  of  the  com- 
ing year,  than  any  very  tender  regrets  for  the  decease  of  its  pre- 
decessor.    But  I  am  none  of  those  who— 


NEW  YEAR'S  EVE.  35 


Welcome  the  coming,  speed  the  parting  guest. 

I  am  naturally,  beforehand,  shy  of  novelties  ;  new  books,  new 
faces,  new  years, — from  some  mental  twist  which  makes  it  diffi- 
cult in  me  to  face  the  prospective.  I  have  almost  ceased  to  hope  ; 
and  am  sanguine  only  in  the  prospects  of  other  (former)  years.  I 
plunge  into  foregone  visions  and  conclusions.  I  encounter  pell- 
mell  with  past  disappointments.  I  am  armor-proof  against  old 
discouragements.  1  forgive,  or  overcome  in  lancy,  old  adversa- 
ries. I  play  over  again  for  love,  as  the  gamesters  phrase  it, 
games,  for  which  I  once  paid  so  dear.  I  would  scarce  now  have 
any  of  those  untoward  accidents  and  events  of  my  life  reversed. 
I  would  no  more  alter  them  than  the  incidents  of  some  well-con- 
trived novel.  Methinks  it  is  better  that  I  should  have  pined 
away  seven  of  my  goldenest  years,  when  I  was  thrall  to  the  fair 

hair,  and  fairer  eyes,  of  Alice  W n,  than  that  so  passionate  a 

love-adventure  should  be  lost.  It  was  better  that  our  family 
should  have  missed  that  legacy,  which  old  Dorrell  cheated  us  of, 
than  that  I  should  have  at  this  moment  two  thousand  pounds  in 
lanco,  and  be  without  the  idea  of  the  specious  old  rogue. 

In  a  degree  beneath  manhood,  it  is  my  infirmity  to  look  back 
upon  those  early  days.  Do  I  advance  a  paradox,  when  I  say, 
that,  skipping  over  the  intervention  of  forty  years,  a  man  may 
have  leave  to  love  himself,  without  the  imputation  of  self-love  ? 

If  I  know  aught  of  myself,  no  one  whose  mind  is  introspec- 
tive— and  mine  is  painfully  so — can  have  a  less  respect  for  hia 
present  identity,  than  I  have  for  the  man  Elia.  I  know  him  to  be 
light,  and  vain,  and  humorsome ;  a  notorious  *  *  *  j  addicted 
to  *  *  *  *  :  averse  from  counsel,  neither  taking  it  nor  offering 
it ; — *  *  *  besides ;  a  stammering  buffoon  ;  what  you  will ;  lay  it 
on,  and  spare  not :  I  subscribe  to  it  all,  and  much  more  than  thou 

canst  be  willing  to  lay  at  his  door but  for  the  child  Elia,  that 

"  other  me,"  there,  in  the  back-ground — I  must  take  leave  to 
cherish  the  remembrance  of  that  young  master — with  as  little 
reference,  I  protest,  to  this  stupid  changeling  of  five-and-forty,  as 
if  it  had  been  a  child  of  some  other  house,  and  not  of  my  parents. 
I  can  cry  over  its  patient  small-pox  at  five,  and  rougher  medica- 
ments.    I  can  lay  its  poor  fevered  head  upon  the  sick  pillow  at 


36  ELIA. 

Christ's  and  awake  with  it  in  surprise  at  the  gentle  posture  of 
maternal  tenderness  hanging  over  it,  that  unknown  had  watched 
its  sleep.  I  know  how  it  shrank  from  any  the  least  color  of  false- 
hood. God  help  thee,  Elia,  how  art  thou  changed  ! — Thou  art 
sophisticated. — I  know  how  honest,  how  courageous  (for  a  weak- 
ling) it  was — how  religious,  how  imaginative,  how  hopeful !  From 
what  have  I  not  fallen,  if  the  child  I  remember  was  indeed 
myself, — and  not  some  dissembling  guardian,  presenting  a  false 
identity,  to  give  the  rule  to  my  unpractised  steps,  and  regulate 
the  tone  of  my  moral  being  ! 

That  I  am  fond  of  indulging,  beyond  a  hope  of  sympathy,  in 
such  retrospection,  may  be  the  symptom  of  some  sickly  idiosyn- 
crasy. Or  is  it  owing  to  another  cause  :  simply,  that  being  with- 
out wife  or  family,  I  have  not  learned  to  project  myself  enough 
out  of  myself;  and  having  no  offspring  of  my  own  to  dally  with, 
I  turn  back  upon  memory,  and  adopt  my  own  early  idea,  as  my 
heir  and  favorite  ?  If  these  speculations  seem  fantastical  to  thee, 
reader — (a  busy  man,  perchance),  if  I  tread  out  of  the  way  of 
thy  sympathy,  and  am  singularly  conceited  only,  I  retire,  im- 
penetrable to  ridicule,  under  the  phantom  cloud  of  Elia. 

The  elders,  with  whom  I  was  brought  up,  were  of  a  character 
not  likely  to  let  slip  the  sacred  observance  of  any  old  institution ; 
and  the  ringing  out  of  the  Old  Year  was  kept  by  them  with  cir- 
cumstances of  peculiar  ceremony. — In  those  days  the  sound  of 
those  midnight  chimes,  though  it  seemed  to  raise  hilarity  in  all 
around  me,  never  failed  to  bring  a  train  of  pensive  imagery  into 
my  fancy.  Yet  I  then  scarce  conceived  what  it  meant,  or  thought 
of  it  as  a  reckoning  that  concerned  me.  Not  childhood  alone  but 
the  young  man  till  thirty,  never  feels  practically  that  he  is  mortal. 
He  knows  it  indeed,  and,  if  need  were,  he  could  preach  a  homily 
on  the  fragility  of  life ;  but  he  brings  it  not  home  to  himself,  any 
more  than  in  a  hot  June  we  can  appropriate  to  our  imagination 
the  freezing  days  of  December.  But  now,  shall  I  confess  a 
truth  ? — I  feel  these  audits  but  too  powerfully.  I  begin  to  count 
the  probabilities  of  my  duration,  and  to  grudge  at  the  expenditure 
of  moments  and  shortest  periods,  like  misers'  farthings.  In  pro- 
portion as  the  years  both  lessen  and  shorten,  I  set  more  count 
upon  their  periods,  and  would  fain  lay  my  ineffectual  finger  upon 


NEW  YEAR'S  EVE.  37 


the  spoke  of  the  great  wheel.  I  am  not  content  to  pass  away 
"like  a  weaver's  shuttle."  Those  metaphors  solace  me  not,  nor 
sweeten  the  unpalatable  draught  of  mortality.  I  care  not  to  be 
carried  with  the  tide,  that  smoothly  bears  human  life  to  eternity ; 
and  reluct  at  Jhe  inevitable  course  of  destiny.  I  am  in  love  with 
this  green  earth ;  the  face  of  town  and  country ;  the  unspeakable 
rural  solitudes,  and  the  sweet  security  of  streets.  I  would  set  up 
my  tabernacle  here.  I  am  content  to  stand  still  at  the  age  to 
which  I  am  arrived ;  I,  and  my  friends :  to  be  no  younger,  no 
richer,  no  handsomer.  I  do  not  want  to  be  weaned  by  age ;  or 
drop,  like  mellow  fruit,  as  they  say,  into  the  grave. — Any  altera- 
tion, on  this  earth  of  mine,  in  diet  or  in  lodging,  puzzles  and  dis- 
composes me.  My  household-gods  plant  a  terrible  fixed  foot,  and 
are  not  rooted  up  without  blood.  They  do  not  willingly  seek 
Lavinian  shores.     A  new  state  of  being  staggers  me. 

Sun,  and  sky,  and  breeze,  and  solitary  walks,  and  summer 
holidays,  and  the  greenness  of  fields,  and  the  delicious  juices  of 
meats  and  fishes,  and  society,  and  the  cheerful  glass,  and  candle- 
light and  fire-side  conversations,  and  innocent  vanities,  and  jests, 
and  irony  itself- — do  these  things  go  out  with  life  ? 

Can  a  ghost  laugh,  or  shake  his  gaunt  sides,  when  you  are 
pleasant  with  him  ? 

And  you,  my  midnight  darlings,  my  Folios  !  must  I  part  with 
the  intense  delight  of  having  you  (huge  armfulls)  in  my  embra- 
ces ?  Must  knowledge  come  to  me,  if  it  come  at  all,  by  some 
awkward  experiment  of  intuition,  and  no  longer  by  this  familiar 
process  of  reading  ? 

Shall  I  enjoy  friendships  there,  wanting  the  smiling  indications 
which  point  me  to  them  here, — ^the  recognizable  face — the  "  sweet 
assurance  of  a  look" — ? 

In  winter  this  intolerable  disinclination  to  dying — ^to  give  it 
its  mildest  name — does  more  especially  haunt  and  beset  me.  In 
a  genial  August  noon,  beneath  a  sweltering  sky,  death  is  almost 
problematic.  At  those  times  do  such  poor  snakes  as  myself  enjoy 
an  immortality.  Then  we  expand  and  bourgeon.  Then  we  are 
'as  strong  again,  as  valiant  again,  as  wise  again,  and  a  great  deal 
taller.  The  blast  that  nips  and  shrinks  me,  puts  me  in  thoughts 
of  death.     All  things  allied  to  the  insubstantial,  wait  upon  that 


38  ELIA. 

master  feeling ;  cold,  numbness,  dreams,  perplexity ;  moonlight 
itself,  with  its  shadowy  and  spectral  appearances, — that  cold 
ghost  of  the  sun,  or  Phoebus'  sickly  sister,  like  that  innutritious 
one  denounced  in  the  Canticles : — I  am  none  of  her  minions — I 
hold  with  the  Persian. 

Whatever  thwarts,  or  puts  me  out  of  my  way,  brings  death 
into  my  mind.  All  partial  evils,  like  humors,  run  into  that  capi- 
tal plague-sore.  I  have  heard  some  profess  an  indifference  to 
life.  Such  hail  the  end  of  their  existence  as  a  port  of  refuge ; 
and  speak  of  the  grave  as  of  some  soft  arms,  in  which  they  may 

slumber  as  on  a  pillow.     Some  have  wooed  death but  out 

upon  thee,  I  say,  thou  foul,  ugly  phantom  !  I  detest,  abhor,  exe- 
crate, and  (with  Friar  John)  give  thee  to  six-score  thousand 
devils,  as  in  no  instance  to  be  excused  or  tolerated,  but  shunned 
as  an  universal  viper  ;  to  be  branded,  proscribed,  and  spoken  evil 
of.  In  no  way  can  I  be  brought  to  digest  thee,  thou  thin,  melan- 
choly Privation,  or  more  frightful  and  confounding  Positive  f 

Those  antidotes,  prescribed  against  the  fear  of  thee,  are  alto- 
gether frigid  and  insulting,  like  thyself.  For  what  satisfaction 
hath  a  man,  that  he  shall  "  lie  down  with  kings  and  emperors  in 
death,"  who  in  his  life-time  never  greatly  coveted  the  society 
of  such  bed-fellows  ? — or,  forsooth,  that  "  so  shall  the  fairest  face 

appear  ?" — why,  to  comfort  me,  must  Alice  W n  be  a  goblin  ? 

More  than  all,  I  conceive  disgust  at  those  impertinent  and  misbe- 
coming familiarities,  inscribed  upon  your  ordinary  tombstones. 
Every  dead  man  must  take  upon  himself  to  be  lecturing  me  with 
his  odious  truism,  that  "  Such  as  he  now  is  I  must  shortly  be." 
Not  so  shortly,  friend,  perhaps  as  thou  imaginest.  In  the  mean 
time  I  am  alive.  I  move  about.  I  am  worth  twenty  of  thee. 
Know  thy  betters  !  Thy  New  Years'  days  are  past.  I  survive, 
a  jolly  candidate  for  1821.  Another  cup  of  wine — and  while 
that  turn-coat  bell,  that  just  now  mournfully  chanted  the  obse- 
quies of  1820  departed,  with  changed  notes  lustily  rings  in  a 
successor,  let  us  attune  to  its  peal  the  song  made  on  a  like  occa- 
sion, by  hearty,  cheerful  Mr.  Cotton. 


NEW-YEAR'S  EVE.  39 


THE  NEW  YEAR. 

Hark  the  cock  crows,  and  yon  bright  star 

Tells  us  the  day  himself  's  not  far ; 

And  see  where,  breaking  from  the  night. 

He  gilds  the  western  hills  with  light. 

With  him  old  Janus  doth  appear, 

Peeping  into  the  future  year. 

With  such  a  look  as  seems  to  say. 

The  prospect  is  not  good  that  way. 

Thus  do  we  rise  ill  sights  to  see. 

And  'gainst  ourselves  to  prophesy  ; 

When  the  prophetic  fear  of  things 

A  more  tormenting  mischief  brings. 

More  full  of  soul-tormenting  gall 

Than  direst  mischiefs  can  befall. 

But  stay  !  but  stay  !  methinks  my  sight, 

Better  inform'd  by  clearer  light. 

Discerns  sereneness  in  that  brow. 

That  all  contracted  seem'd  but  now. 

His  reversed  face  may  show  distaste. 

And  frown  ypon  the  ills  are  past ; 

But  that  which  this  way  looks  is  clear. 

And  smiles  upon  the  New-born  Year. 

He  looks  too  from  a  place  so  high, 

The  Year  lies  open  to  his  eye  ; 

And  all  the  moments  open  are 

To  tlie  exact  discoverer. 

Yet  more  and  more  he  smiles  upon 

The  happy  revolution. 

Why  should  we  then  suspect  or  fear 

The  influences  of  a  year, 

So  smiles  upon  us  the  first  morn. 

And  speaks  us  good  so  soon  as  born  ? 

Plague  on't !  the  last  was  ill  enough. 

This  cannot  but  make  better  proof; 

Or,  at  the  worst,  as  we  brushed  through 

The  last,  why  so  we  may  this  too ; 

And  then  the  next  in  reason  should 

Be  superexcellently  good : 

For  the  worst  ills  we  daily  see 

Have  no  more  perpetuity 

Than  the  best  fortunes  that  do  fall ; 

Which  also  bring  us  wherewithal 

Longer  their  being  to  support. 


40  ELIA. 

Than  those  do  of  the  other  sort : 

And  who  has  one  good  year  in  three. 

And  yet  repines  at  destiny, 

Appears  ungrateful  in  the  case. 

And  merits  not  the  good  he  has.  v 

Then  let  us  welcome  the  New  Guest 

With  lusty  brimmers  of  the  best ; 

Mirth  always  should  Good  Fortune  meet 

And  renders  e'en  Disaster  sweet : 

And  though  the  Princess  turn  her  back, 

Let  us  but  line  ourselves  with  sack, 

We  better  shall  by  far  hold  out. 

Till  the  next  Year  she  face  about 

How  say  you,  reader — do  not  these  verses  smack  of  the  rough 
magnanimity  of  the  old  English  vein  ?  Do  they  not  fortify  like 
a  cordial ;  enlarging  the  heart,  and  productive  of  sweet  blood, 
and  generous  spirits,  in  the  concoction  ?  Where  be  those  puling 
fears  of  death,  just  now  expressed  or  affected  ? — Passed  like  a 
cloud — absorbed  in  the  purging  sunlight  of  clear  poetry — clean 
washed  away  by  a  wave  of  genuine  Helicon,  your  only  Spa  for 
these  hypochondries — And  now  another  cup  of  the  generous ! 
and  a  merry  New  Year,  and  many  of  them,  to  you  all,  my 
masters ! 


r^ 


MRS.  BATTLE'S  OPINIONS  ON  WHIST.  41 


MRS,  BATTLE'S  OPINIONS  ON  WHIST 


"  A  CLEAR  fire,  a  clean  hearth,  and  the  rigor  of  the  game." 
This  was  the  celebrated  wish  of  old  Sarah  Battle  (now  with  God), 
who,  next  to  her  devotions,  loved  a  good  game  of  whist.  She 
was  none  of  your  lukewarm  gamesters,  your  half-and-half  play- 
ers, who  have  no  objection  to  take  a  hand,  if  you  want  one  to 
make  up  a  rubber ;  who  affirm  that  they  have  no  pleasure  in 
winning  ;  that  they  like  to  win  one  game  and  lose  another ;  that 
they  can  while  away  an  hour  very  agreeably  at  a  card-table,  but 
are  indifferent  whether  they  play  or  no  ;  and  will  desire  an  ad- 
versary who  has  slipped  a  wrong  card  to  take  it  up  and  play 
another.  These  insufferable  triflers  are  the  curse  of  a  table. 
One  of  these  flies  will  spoil  a  whole  pot.  Of  such  it  may  be  said 
that  they  do  not  play  at  cards,  but  only  play  at  playing  at  them. 

Sarah  Battle  was  none  of  that  breed.  She  detested  them,  as  I 
do,  from  her  heart  and  soul,  and  would  not,  save  upon  a  striking 
emergency,  willingly  seat  herself  at  the  same  table  with  them. 
She  loved  a  thorough-paced  partner,  a  determined  enemy.  She 
took,  and  gave,  no  concessions.  She  hated  favors.  She  never 
made  a  revoke,  nor  ever  passed  it  over  in  her  adversary  without 
exacting  the  utmost  forfeiture.  She  fought  a  good  fight :  cut  and 
thrust.  She  held  not  her  good  sword  (her  cards)  "  like  a  dancer." 
She  sate  bolt  upright ;  and  neither  showed  you  her  cards  nor 
desired  to  see  yours.  All  people  have  their  blind  side — their 
superstitions ;  and  I  have  heard  her  declare,  under  the  rose,  that 
hearts  was  her  favorite  suit. 

I  never  in  my  life — and  I  knew  Sarah  Battle  many  of  the  best 
years  of  it — saw  her  take  out  her  snuff-box  when  it  was  her  turn 
to  play  ;  or  snufF  a  candle  in  the  middle  of  a  game  j  or  ring  for 


42  ELIA. 

a  servant  till  it  was  fairly  over.  She  never  introduced,  or  con- 
nived at,  miscellaneous  conversation  during  its  process.  As  she 
emphatically  observed,  cards  were  cards ;  and  if  I  ever  saw  un- 
mingled  distaste  in  her  fine  last-century  countenance,  it  was  at 
the  airs  of  a  young  gentleman  of  a  literary  turn,  who  had  been 
with  difficulty  persuaded  to  take  a  hand  ;  and  who,  in  his  excess 
of  candor,  declared,  that  he  thought  there  was  no  harm  in  un- 
bending the  mind  now  and  then,  after  serious  studies,  in  recrea- 
tions of  that  kind  !  She  could  not  bear  to  have  her  noble  occu- 
pation, to  which  she  wound  up  her  faculties,  considered  in  that 
light.  It  was  her  business,  her  duty,  the  thing  she  came  into  the 
world  to  do, — and  she  did  it.  She  unbent  her  mind  afterwards, 
over  a  book. 

Pope  was  her  favorite  author:  his  Rape  of  the  Lock  her 
favorite  work.  She  once  did  me  the  favor  to  play  over  with  me 
(with  the  cards)  his  celebrated  game  of  Ombre  in  that  poem ; 
and  to  explain  to  me  how  far  it  agreed  with,  and  in  what  points 
it  would  be  found  to  differ  from,  tradrille.  Her  illustrations  were 
apposite  and  poignant ;  and  I  had  the  pleasure  of  sending  the 
substance  of  them  to  Mr.  Bowles ;  but  I  suppose  they  came  too 
late  to  be  inserted  among  his  ingenious  notes  upon  that  author. 

Quadrille,  she  has  often  told  me,  was  her  first  love ;  but  whist  had 
engaged  her  maturer  esteem.  The  former,  she  said,  was  showy  and 
specious,  and  likely  to  allure  young  persons.  The  uncertainty  and 
quick  shifting  of  partners — a  thing  which  the  constancy  of  whist 
abhors  ; — the  dazzling  supremacy  and  regal  investiture  of  Spa- 
dille — absurd,  as  she  justly  observed,  in  the  pure  aristocracy  of 
whist,  where  his  crown  and  garter  gave  him  no  proper  power 
above  his  brother-nobility  of  the  Aces ; — the  giddy  vanity,  so 
taking  to  the  inexperienced,  of  playing  alone  ;  above  all,  the 
overpowering  attractions  of  a  Sans  Prendre  Vole, — to  the  triumph 
of  which  there  is  certainly  nothing  parallel  or  approaching,  in  the 
contingencies  of  whist ; — all  these,  she  would  say,  make  quadrille 
a  game  of  captivation  to  the  young  and  enthusiastic.  But  whist 
was  the  solider  game  :  that  was  her  word.  It  was  a  long  meal : 
not,  like  quadrille,  a  feast  of  snatches.  One  or  two  rubbers  might 
co-extend  in  duration  with  an  evening.  They  gave  time  to  form 
rooted  friendships,  to  cultivate  steady  enmities.     She  despised  the 


MRS.  BATTLE'S  OPINIONS  ON  WHIST.  43 

chance-started,  capricious,  and  ever-fluctuating  alliances  of  the 
other.  The  skirmishes  of  quadrille,  she  would  say,  reminded 
her  of  the  petty  ephemeral  embroilments  of  the  little  Italian  states, 
depicted  by  Machiavel :  perpetually  changing  postures  and  con- 
nexions ;  bitter  foes  to-day,  sugared  darlings  to-morrow ;  kissing 
and  scratching  in  a  breath  ; — but  the  wars  of  whist  were  com- 
parable to  the  long,  steady,  deep-rooted,  rational,  antipathies  of 
the  great  French  and  English  nations. 

A  grave  simplicity  was  what  she  chiefly  admired  in  her  fa- 
vorite game.  There  was  nothing  silly  in  it,  like  the  nob  in  crib- 
bage — nothing  superfluous.  No  flushes — that  most  irrational  of 
all  pleas  that  a  reasonable  being  can  set  up  : — that  any  one  should 
claim  four  by  virtue  of  holding  cards  of  the  same  mark  and 
color,  without  reference  to  the  playing  of  the  game,  or  the  indi- 
vidual worth  or  pretensions  of  the  cards  themselves !  She  held 
this  to  be  a  solecism ;  as  pitiful  an  ambition  at  cards  as  allitera- 
tion is  in  authorship.  She  despised  superficiality,  and  looked 
deeper  than  the  color  of  things.  Suits  were  soldiers,  she  would 
say,  and  must  have  an  uniformity  of  array  to  distinguish  them: 
but  what  should  we  say  to  a  foolish  squire,  who  should  claim  a 
merit  from  dressing  up  his  tenantry  in  red  jackets,  that  never 
were  to  be  marshalled — never  to  take  the  field  ? — She  even  wished 
that  whist  were  more  simple  than  it  is ;  and,  in  my  mind,  would 
have  stripped  it  of  some  appendages,  which,  in  the  slate  of  human 
frailty,  may  be  vcnially  and  even  commendably,  allowed  of.  She 
saw  no  reason  for  the  deciding  of  the  trump  by  the  turn  of  the 
card.  Why  not  one  suit  al>vays  trumps  ? — Why  two  colors,  when 
the  mark  of  the  suits  would  have  sufficiently  distinguished  them 
without  it  ? — 

"  But  the  eye,  my  dear  Madam,  is  agreeably  refreshed  with  the 
Yariety.  Man  is  not  a  creature  of  pure  reason — he  must  have 
his  senses  delightfully  appealed  to.  We  see  it  in  Roman  Catholic 
countries,  where  the  music  and  the  paintings  draw  in  many  to 
worship,  whom  your  quaker  spirit  of  unsensualising  would  have 
kept  out. — You  yourself  have  a  pretty  collection  of  paintings — 
but  confess  to  me,  whether,  walking  in  your  gallery  at  Sandham, 
among  thos  clear  Vandykes,  or  among  the  Paul  Potters  in  the 
ante-room,  }  3U  ever  fell  your  bosom  glow  with  an  elegant  delight, 


44  ELIA 

at  all  comparable  to  that  you  have  it  in  your  power  to  experience 
most  evenings  over  a  well-arranged  assortment  of  the  court  cards  ? 
— the  pretty  antic  habits,  like  heralds  in  a  procession — the  gay 
triumph-assuring  scarlets — ^the  contrasting  deadly-killing  sables— 
the  'hoary  majesty  of  spades' — Pam  in  all  his  glory  ! — 

"  All  these  might  be  dispensed  with  ;  and  with  their  naked 
names  upon  the  drab  pasteboard,  the  game  might  go  on  very  well 
pictureless.  But  the  beauty  of  cards  would  be  extinguished  for 
ever.  Stripped  of  all  that  is  imaginative  in  them,  they  must 
degenerate  into  mere  gambling.  Imagine  a  dull  deal  board,  or 
drum  head,  to  spread  them  on,  instead  of  that  nice  verdant  carpet 
(next  to  nature's),  fittest  arena  for  those  courtly  combatants  to 
play  their  gallant  jousts  and  tourneys  in ! — Exchange  those  deli- 
cately-turned ivory  markers — (work  of  Chinese  artist,  unconscious 
of  their  symbol, — or  as  profanely  slighting  their  true  application 
as  the  arrantest  Ephesian  journeyman  that  turned  out  those  little 
shrines  for  the  goddess) — exchange  them  for  little  bits  of  leather 
(our  ancestor's  money)  or  chalk  and  a  slate  ! " — 

The  old  lady,  with  a  smile,  confessed  the  soundness  of  my 
logic,  and  to  her  approbation  of  my  arguments  on  her  favorite 
topic  that  evening,  I  have  always  fancied  myself  indebted  for  the 
legacy  of  a  curious  cribbage-board,  made  of  the  finest  Sienna 
marble,  which  her  maternal  uncle  (old  Walter  Plumer,  whom  I 
have  elsewhere  celebrated)  brought  with  him  from  Florence : — ■ 
this,  and  a  trifle  of  five  hundred  pounds,  came  to  me  at  her 
death. 

The  former  bequest  (which  I  do  not  least  value)  I  have  kept 
with  religious  care ;  though  she  herself,  to  confess  a  truth,  was 
never  greatly  taken  with  cribbage.  It  was  an  essentially  vulgar 
game,  I  have  heard  her  say, — disputing  with  her  uncle,  who  was 
very  partial  to  it.  She  could  never  heartily  bring  her  mouth  to  pro- 
nounce "  Go  " — or  "  Thafs  ago."  She  called  it  an  ungrammati- 
cal  game.  The  pegging  teased  her.  I  once  knew  her  to  forfeit  a 
rubber  (a  guinea  stake),  because  she  would  not  take  advantage 
of  the  turn-up  knave,  which  would  have  given  it  her,  but  which 
she  must  have  claimed  by  the  disgraceful  tenure  of  declaring 
"  two  for  his  heels."  There  is  something  extremely  genteel  in 
this  sort  of  self-denial.     Sarah  Battle  was  a  gentlewo  nan  born. 


MRS.  BATTLE'S  OPINIONS  ON  WHIST.  45 

Piquet  she  held  the  best  game  at  the  cards  for  two  persons, 
though  she  would  ridicule  the  pedantry  of  the  terms — such  as 
pique — repique — the  capot — they  savored  (she  thought)  of  affec- 
tation. But  games  for  two,  or  even  three,  she  never  greatly  cared 
for.  She  loved  the  quadrate,  or  square.  She  would  argue  thus : 
— Cards  are  warfare :  the  ends  are  gain,  with  glory.  But  cards 
are  war,  in  disguise  of  a  sport ;  when  single  adversaries  en- 
counter, the  ends  proposed  are  too  palpable.  By  themselves,  it  is 
too  close  a  fight ;  with  spectators,  it  is  not  much  bettered.  No 
looker-on  can  be  interested,  except  for  a  bet,  and  then  it  is  a  mere 
affair  of  money ;  he  cares  not  for  your  luck  sympathetically,  or  for 
your  play. — Three  are  still  worse ;  a  mere  naked  war  of  every  man 
against  every  man,  as  in  cribbage,  without  league  or  alliance ; 
or  a  rotation  of  petty  and  contradictory  interests,  a  succession  of 
heartless  leagues,  and  not  much  more  hearty  infractions  of  them, 
as  in  tradrille. — But  in  square  games  (she  meant  whist),  all  that  is 
possible  to  be  attained  in  card-playing  is  accomplished.  There 
are  the  incentives  of  profit  with  honor,  common  to  every  species 
— though  the  latter  can  be  but  very  imperfectly  enjoyed  in  those 
other  games,  where  the  spectator  is  only  feebly  a  participator. 
But  the  parties  in  whist  are  spectators  and  principals  too.  They 
are  a  theatre  to  themselves,  and  a  looker-on  is  not  wanted.  He 
is  rather  worse  than  nothing,  and  an  impertinence.  Whist  abhors 
neutrality,  or  interests  beyond  its  sphere.  You  glory  in  some 
surprising  stroke  of  skill  or  fortune,  not  because  a  cold — or  even 
an  interested — bystander  witnesses  it,  but  because  your  partner 
sympathizes  in  the  contingency.  You  win  for  two.  You  triumph 
for  two.  Two  are  exalted.  Two  again  are  mortified ;  which 
divides  their  disgrace,  as  the  conjunction  doubles  (by  taking  off 
the  invidiousness)  your  glories.  Two  losing  to  two  are  better 
reconciled,  than  one  to  one  in  that  close  butchery.  The  hostile 
feeling  is  weakened  by  multiplying  the  channels.  War  becomes 
a  civil  game. — By  such  reasonings  as  these  the  old  lady  was  ac- 
customed to  defend  her  favorite  pastime. 

No  inducement  could  ever  prevail  upon  her  to  play  at  any  game, 
where  chance  entered  into  the  composition, ybr  nothing.  Chance, 
she  would  argue — and  here  again  admire  the  subtlety  of  her 
conclusion;  —chance  is  nothing,  but  where  something  else  depends 


46  ELIA. 

upon  it.  It  is  obvious  that  cannot  he  glory.  What  rational  cause 
of  exultation  could  it  give  to  a  man  to  turn  up  size  ace  a  hundred 
times  together  by  himself  ?  or  before  spectators,  where  no  stake 
was  depending  ? — Make  a  lottery  of  a  hundred  thousand  tickets 
wiih  but  one  fortunate  number — and  what  possible  principle  of 
our  nature,  except  stupid  wonderment,  could  it  gratify  to  gain 
that  number  as  many  times  successively,  without  a  prize  ? — 
Therefore  she  disliked  the  mixture  of  chance  in  backgammon, 
where  it  was  not  played  for  money.  She  called  it  foolish,  and 
those  people  idiots,  who  were  taken  with  a  lucky  hit  under  such 
circumstances.  Games  of  pure  skill  were  as  little  to  her  fancy. 
Played  for  a  stake,  they  were  a  mere  system  of  over-reaching. 
Played  for  glory  they  were  a  mere  setting  of  one  man's  wit, — 
his  memory,  or  combination-faculty  rather — against  another's ; 
like  a  mock-engagernent  at  a  review,  bloodless  and  profitless. 
She  could  not  conceive  a  game  wanting  the  sprightly  infusion  of 
chance,  the  handsome  excuses  of  good  fortune.  Two  people 
playing  at  chess  in  a  corner  of  a  room,  whilst  whist  v/as  stirring 
in  the  centre,  would  inspire  her  with  insufferable  horror  and 
ennui.  Those  well-cut  similitudes  of  Castles,  and  Knights,  the 
imagery  of  the  board,  she  would  argue  (and  I  think  in  this  case 
justly),  were  entirely  misplaced  and  senseless.  Those  hard 
head-contests  can  in  no  instance  ally  with  the  fancy.  They 
reject  form  and  color.  A  pencil  and  dry-slate  (she  used  to  say) 
were  the  proper  arena  for  such  combatants. 

To  those  puny  objectors  against  cards,  as  nurturing  the  bad 
passions,  she  would  retort,  that  man  is  a  gaming  animal.     He 
must  be  always  trying  to  get  the  better  in  something  or  other : — 
that  this  passion  can  scarcely  be  more  safely  expended  than  upon 
a  game  at  cards :  that  cards  are  a  temporary  illusion ;  in  truth, 
a  mere  drama ;  for  we  do  but  play  at  being  mightily  concerned, 
where  a  few  idle  shillings  are  at  stake,  yet,  during  the  illusion,  we 
are  as  mightily  concerned  as  those  whose  stake  is  crowns  an 
kingdoms.     They  are  a  sort  of  dream-fighting  ;  much  ado ;  grea 
battling,  and  little  bloodshed ;  mighty  means  for  disproportionec 
ends ;  quite  as  diverting,  and  a  great  deal  more  innoxious,  thai 
many  of  those  more  serious  games  of  life,  which  men  play,  with 
out  esteeming  them  to  be  such. 


MRS.  BATTLE'S  OPINIONS  ON  WHIST,  47 

With  great  deference  to  the  old  lady's  judgment  on  these  mat- 
ters I  think  I  have  experienced  some  moments  in  my  life,  when 
playing  at  cards  for  nothing  has  even  been  agreeable.  When  I 
am  in  sickness,  or  not  in  the  best  spirits,  I  sometimes  call  for  the 
cards,  and  play  a  game  at  piquet ybr  hve  with  my  cousin  Bridget 
— Bridget  Elia. 

I  grant  there  is  something  sneaking  in  it ;  but  with  a  tooth- 
ache, or  a  sprained  ankle, — when  you  are  subdued  and  humble, 
— you  are  glad  to  put  up  with  an  inferior  spring  of  action. 

There  is  such  a  thing  in  nature,  I  am  convinced,  as  sick  whist. 

I  grant  it  is  not  the  highest  style  of  man — I  deprecate  the 
manes  of  Sarah  ^Battle — she  lives  not,  alas !  to  whom  I  should 
apologise. 

At  such  times,  those  terms  which  my  old  friend  objected  to, 
come  in  as  something  admissible. — I  love  to  get  a  tierce  or  a 
quatorze,  though  they  mean  nothing.  I  am  subdued  to  an  in- 
ferior interest.     Those  shadows  of  winning  amuse  me. 

That  last  game  I  had  with  my  sweet  cousin  (I  capotted  her) — 
(dare  I  tell  thee  how  foolish  I  am  ?) — I  wished  it  might  have 
lasted  for  ever,  though  we  gained  nothing,  and  lost  nothing,  thougli 
it  was  a  mere  shade  of  play :  I  would  be  content  to  go  on  in  that 
idle  folly  for  ever.  The  pipkin  should  be  ever  boiling,  that  was 
to  prepare  the  gentle  lenitive  to  my  foot,  which  Bridget  was 
doomed  to  apply  after  the  game  was  over  :  and,  as  I  do  not  much 
relish  appliances,  there  it  should  ever  bubble.  Bridget  and  I 
should  be  ever  playing.  , -.-    . 


4S  ELIA. 


A  CHAPTER  ON  EARS, 


I  HAVE  no  ear. — 

Mistake  me  not,  reader — nor  imagine  that  I  am  by  nature  des- 
titute of  those  exterior  twin  appendages,  hanging  ornaments,  and 
(architecturally  speaking)  handsome  volutes  to  the  human  capi- 
tal. Better  my  mother  had  never  borne  me. — I  am,  I  think, 
rather  delicately  than  copiously  provided  with  those  conduits ; 
and  I  feel  no  disposition  to  envy  the  mule  for  his  plenty,  or  the 
mole  for  her  exactness,  in  those  ingenious  labyrinthine  inlets — 
those  indispensable  side-intelligencers. 

Neither  have  I  incurred,  or  done  anything  to  incur,  with  Defoe, 
that  hideous  disfigurement,  which  constrained  him  to  draw  upon 
assurance — to  feel  "  quite  unabashed,"  and  at  ease  upon  that 
article.  I  was  never,  I  thank  my  stars,  in  the  pillory ;  nor,  if 
I  read  them  aright,  is  it  within  the  compass  of  my  destiny,  that 
I  ever  should  be. 

When  therefore  I  say  that  I  have  no  ear,  you  will  understand 
me  to  mean — -for  music.  To  say  that  this  heart  never  melted  at 
the  concord  of  sweet  sounds,  would  be  a  foul  self-libel.  "  Water 
parted  from  the  sea  "  never  fails  to  move  it  strangely.  So  does 
"  In  infancy. ^^  But  they  were  used  to  be  sung  at  her  harpsichord 
(the  old-fashioned  instrument  in  vogue  in  those  days)  by  a 
gentlewoman — the  gentlest,  sure,  that  ever  merited  the  appella- 
tion— the  sweetest — why  should  I  hesitate  to  name  Mrs.  S , 

once  the  blooming  Fanny  Weatheral  of  the  Temple — who  had 
power  to  thrill  the  soul  of  Elia,  small  imp  as  he  was,  even  in 
his  long  coats  ;  and  to  make  him  glow,  tremble,  and  blush  with 
a  passion,  that  not  faintly  indicated  the  day-spring  of  that  absorb. 


A  CHAPTER  ON  EARS.  49 

ing  sentiment  which  was  afterwards  destined  to  overwhelm  and 
subdue  his  nature  quite  for  Alice  W n. 

I  even  think  that  sentimentally  I  am  disposed  to  harmony.  But 
organically  I  am  incapable  of  a  tune.  I  have  been  practising 
"  God  save  the  King^'  all  my  life;  whistling  and  humming  of  it 
over  to  myself  in  solitary  corners ;  and  am  not  yet  arrived,  they 
tell  me,  within  many  quavers  of  it.  Yet  hath  tHe  loyalty  of  Elia 
never  been  impeached. 

I  am  not  without  suspicion,  that  I  have  an  undeveloped  faculty 
of  music  within  me.  For  thrumming,  in  my  wild  way,  on  my 
friend  A.'s  piano,  the  other  morning,  while  he  was  engaged  in  an 
adjoining  parlor, — on  his  return  he  was  pleased  to  say,  "  he  thought 
it  could  not  be  the  maid .'"  On  his  first  surprise  at  hearing  the 
keys  touched  in  somewhat  an  airy  and  masterful  way,  not  dream- 
ing of  me,  his  suspicions  had  lighted  on  Jenny.  But  a  grace, 
snatched  from  a  superior  refinement,  soon  convinced  him  that 
some  being — technically  perhaps  deficient,  but  higher  informed 
from  a  principle  common  to  all  the  fine  arts — had  swayed  the 
keys  to  a  mood  which  Jenny,  with  all  her  (less  cultivated)  enthu- 
siasm, could  never  have  elicited  from  them.  I  mention  this  as  a 
proof  of  my  friend's  penetration,  and  not  with  any  view  of  dis- 
paraging Jenny. 

Scientifically  I  could  never  be  made  to  understand  (yet  have  1 
taken  some  pains)  what  a  note  in  music  is ;  or  how  one  note 
should  diflfer  from  another.  Much  less  in  voices  can  I  distinguish 
a  soprano  from  a  tenor.  Only  sometimes  the  thorough-bass  I 
contrive  to  guess  at,  from  its  being  supereminently  harsh  and  dis- 
agreeable. I  tremble,  however,  for  my  misapplication  of  the 
simplest  terms  of  that  which  I  disclaim.  While  I  profess  my 
ignorance,  I  scarce  know  what  to  say  1  am  ignorant  of.  I  hate, 
perhaps,  by  misnomers.  Sostenuto  and  adagio  stand  in  the  like 
relation  of  obscurity  to  me ;  and  Sol,  Fa,  Mi,  Re,  is  as  conjuring 
as  Baralijpton. 

It  is  hard  to  stand  alone  in  an  age  like  this, — (constituted  to  the 
quick  and  critical  perception  of  all  harmonious  combinations,  I 
verily  believe,  beyond  all  preceding  ages,  since  Jubal  stumbled 
upon  the  gamut)  to  remain,  as  it  were,  singly  unimpressible  to 
the  magic  influences  of  an  art,  which  is  said  to  have  such  an 

PART  I,  5 


50  ELIA. 

especial  stroke  at  soothing,  elevating,  and  refining  the  passions. 
— Yet,  rather  than  break  the  candid  current  of  my  confessions,  I 
must  avow  to  you,  that  I  have  received  a  great  deal  more  pain 
than  pleasure  from  this  so  cried-up  faculty. 

I  am  constitutionally  susceptible  of  noises.  A  carpenter's 
hammer,  in  a  warm  summer  noon,  will  fret  me  into  more  than 
midsummer  madness.  But  those  unconnected,  unset  sounds  are 
nothing  to  the  measured  malice  of  music.  The  ear  is  passive  to 
those  single  strokes  ;  willingly  enduring  stripes  while  it  hath  no 
task  to  con.  To  music  it  cannot  be  passive.  It  will  strive — 
mine  at  least  will — 'spite  of  its  inaptitude,  to  thread  the  maze  ; 
like  an  unskilled  eye  painfully  poring  upon  hieroglyphics.  I 
have  sat  through  an  Italian  Opera,  till,  for  sheer  pain,  and  inex- 
plicable anguish,  I  have  rushed  out  into  the  noisiest  places  of  the 
crowded  streets,  to  solace  myself  with  sounds  which  I  was  not 
obliged  to  follow,  and  get  rid  of  the  distracting  torment  of  endless, 
fruitless,  barren  attention!  I  take  refuge  in  the  unpretending 
assemblage  of  honest  common-life  sounds  ; — and  the  purgatory 
of  the  Enraged  Musician  becomes  my  paradise. 

I  have  sat  at  an  Oratorio  (that  profanation  of  the  purposes  of 
the  cheerful  playhouse)  watching  the  faces  of  the  auditory  in 
the  pit  (what  a  contrast  to  Hogarth's  Laughing  Audience !)  im- 
moveable, or  affecting  some  faint  emotion — till  (as  some  have 
said,  that  our  occupations  in  the  next  world  will  be  but  a  shadow 
of  what  delighted  us  in  this)  I  have  imagined  myself  in  some  cold 
Theatre  in  Hades,  where  some  of  the  forms  of  the  earthly  one 
should  be  kept  up,  with  none  of  the  enjoyment ;  or  like  that 

Party  in  a  parlor 

All  silent,  and  all  damned. 

Above  all,  those  insufferable  concertos,  and  pieces  of  music,  as 
they  are  called,  do  plague  and  embitter  my  apprehensions. 
Words  are  something ;  but  to  be  exposed  to  an  endless  battery  of 
mere  sounds ;  to  be  long  a  dying,  to  lie  stretched  upon  a  rack  of 
roses  ;  to  keep  up  languor  by  unintermitted  effort ;  to  pile  honey 
upon  sugar,  and  sugar  upon  honey,  to  an  interminable  tedious 
sweetness ;  to  fill  up  sound  with  feeling,  and  strain  ideas  to  keep 


A  CHAPTER  ON  EARS.  51 

pace  with  it ;  to  gaze  on  empty  frames,  and  be  forced  to  make 
the  pictures  for  yourself;  to  read  a  book,  all  stops,  and  be  obliged 
to  supply  the  verbal  matter ;  to  invent  extempore  tragedies  to 
answer  to  the  vague  gestures  of  an  inexplicable  rambling  mime — 
these  are  faint  shadows  of  what  I  have  undergone  from  a  series 
of  the  ablest-executed  pieces  of  this  empty  instrumental  music. 

I  deny  not,  that  in  the  opening  of  a  concert,  I  have  experienced 
something  vastly  lulling  and  agreeable: — afterwards  followeth  the 
languor  and  the  oppression. — Like  that  disappointing  book  in 
Patmos;  or,  like  the  comings  on  of  melancholy,  described  by 
Burton,  doth  music  make  her  first  insinuating  approaches : — "  Most 
pleasant  it  is  to  such  as  are  melancholy  given  to  walk  alone  in 
some  solitary  grove,  betwixt  wood  and  water,  by  some  brook  side, 
and  to  meditate  upon  some  delightsome  and  pleasant  subject,  which 
shall  affect  him  most,  amahilis  insania,  and  mentis  gratissimus 
error.  A  most  incomparable  delight  to  build  castles  in  the  air, 
to  go  smiling  to  themselves,  acting  an  infinite  variety  of  parts, 
which  they  suppose,  and  strongly  imagine,  they  act,  or  that  they  see 
done. — So  delightsome  these  toys  at  first,_they  could  spend  whole 
days  and  nights  without  sleep,  even  whole  years  in  such  contem- 
plations, and  fantastical  meditations,  which  are  like  so  many 
dreams,  and  will  hardly  be  drawn  from  them — winding  and  un- 
winding themselves  as  so  many  clocks,  and  still  pleasing  their 
humors,  until  at  the  last  the  scene  turns  upon  a  sudden,  and 
they  being  now  habituated  to  such  meditations  and  solitary  places, 
can  endure  no  company,  can  think  of  nothing  but  harsh  and  dis- 
tasteful subjects.  Fear,  sorrow,  suspicion,  subrusticus  pudor, 
discontent,  cares,  and  weariness  of  life,  surprise  them  on  a  sudden 
and  they  can  think  of  nothing  else  ;  continually  suspecting,  no 
sooner  are  their  eyes  open,  but  this  infernal  plague  of  melancholy 
seizeth  on  them,  and  terrifies  their  souls,  representing  some  dismal 
object  to  their  minds;  which  now,  by  no  means,  no  labor,  no 
persuasions,  they  can  avoid,  they  cannot  be  rid  of,  they  cannot 
resist." 

Something  like  this  '^  scene  turning  "  I  have  experienced  at 
the  evening  parties,  at  the  house  of  my  good  Catholic  friend 
Nov :  who,  by  the  aid  of  a  capital  organ,  himself  the  most 


52  ELIA. 

finished  of  players,  converts  his  drawing-room  into  a  chapel,  his 
week  days  into  Sundays,  and  these  latter  into  minor  heavens.* 

When  my  friend  commences  upon  one  of  those  solemn  anthems, 
which  peradventure  struck  upon  my  heedless  ear,  rambling  in  the 
side  aisles  of  the  dim  Abbey,  some  five-and-thirty  years  since, 
waking  a  new  sense,  and  putting  a  soul  of  old  religion  into  my 
young  apprehension — (whether  it  be  thaty  in  which  the  Psalmist, 
weary  of  the  persecutions  of  bad  men,  wisheth  to  himself  dove's 
wings — or  that  other,  which,  with  a  like  measure  of  sobriety  and 
pathos,  inquireth  by  what  means  the  young  man  shall  best  cleanse 
his  mind) — a  holy  calm  pervadeth  me. — I  am  for  the  time 

rapt  above  earth, 

And  possess  joys  not  promised  at  my  birth. 

But  when  this  master  of  the  spell,  not  content  to  have  laid  a  soul 
prostrate,  goes  on,  in  his  power,  to  inflict  more  bliss  than  lies  in  her 
capacity  to  receive, — impatient  to  overcome  her  "earthly  "  with  his 
"  heavenly," — still  pouring  in,  for  protracted  hours,  fresh  waves 
and  fresh  from  the  sea  of  sound,  or  from  that  inexhausted  German 
ocean,  above  which,  in  triumphant  progress,  dolphin-seated,  ride 
those  Arions  Haydn  and  Mozart,  with  their  attendant  Tritons,  Bach, 
Beethoven,  and  a  countless  tribe,  whom  to  attempt  to  reckon  up 
would  but  plunge  me  again  in  the  deeps, — I  stagger  under  the 
weight  of  harmony,  reeling  to  and  fro  at  my  wits'  end  ; — clouds, 
as  of  frankincense,  oppress  me — priests,  altars,  censers,  dazzle 
before  me — the  genius  of  his  religion  hath  me  in  her  toils — a 
shadowy  triple  tiara  invests  the  brow  of  my  friend,  late  so  naked, 
so  ingenuous — he  is  Pope, — and  by  him  sits,  like  as  in  the  anomaly 
of  dreams,  a  she-Pope  too, — tricoroneted  like  himself! — I  am 
converted,  and  yet  a  Protestant ; — at  once  malleus  hereticorumy 
and  myself  grand  heresiarch  :  or  three  heresies  centre  in  my 
person : — I  am  Marcion,  Ebion,  and  Cerinthus — Gog  and  Magog 
— what  not  ? — till  the  coming  in  of  the  friendly  supper-tray  dissi- 
pates the  figment,  and  a  draught  of  true  Lutheran  beer  (in  which 
chiefly  my  -friend  shows  himself  no  bigot)  at  once  reconciles  me 
to  the  rationalities  of  a  purer  faith  ;  and  restores  to  me  the  genuine 
unterrifying  aspects  of  my  pleasant-countenanced  host  and  hostess. 

*  I  have  been  there,  and  still  would  go ; 
'Tis  like  a  little  heaven  below. — Br.  Waffs 


ALL  FOOLS'  DAY.  53 


ALL  FOOLS'  DAY. 


'wv>*^^VV* 


The  compliments  of  the  season  to  my  worthy  masters,  and  a  merry 
first  of  April  to  us  all ! 

Many  happy  returns  of  this  day  to  you — and  you — and  youy 
Sir — nay,  never  frown,  man,  nor  put  a  long  face  upon  the  matter. 
Do  not  we  know  one  another  ?  what  need  of  ceremony  among 
friends  ?  we  have  all  a  touch  of  that  same — you  understand  me — 
a  speck  of  the  motley.  Beshrew  the  man  who  on  such  a  day  as 
this,  the  general  festival^  should  affect  to  stand  aloof.  I  am  none 
of  those  sneakers.  I  am  free  of  the  corporation,  and  care  not  who 
knows  it.  He  that  meets  me  in  the  forest  to-day,  shall  meet  with 
no  wise-acre,  I  can  tell  him.  Stultus  sum.  Translate  me  that, 
and  take  the  meaning  of  it  to  yourself  for  your  pains.  What ! 
man,  we  have  four  quarters  of  the  globe  on  our  side,  at  the  least 
computation. 

Fill  us  a  cup  of  that  sparkling  gooseberry — we  will  drink  no 
wise,  melancholy,  politic  port  on  this  day — and  let  us  troll  the 
catch  of  Amiens — due  ad  me — due  ad  me — how  goes  it  ? 

Here  shall  he  see 
Gross  fools  as  he. 

Now  would  I  give  a  trifle  to  know  historically  and  authentically, 
who  was  the  greatest  fool  that  ever  lived.  I  would  certainly 
give  him  in  a  bumper.  Marry,  of  the  present  breed,  I  think  I 
could  without  much  difficulty  name  you  the  party. 

Remove  your  cap  a  little  further,  if  you  please  :  It  hides  my 
bauble.  And  now  each  man  bestride  his  hobby,  and  dust  away 
his  bells  to  what  tune  he  pleases.     I  will  give  you,  for  my  part, 

The  crazy  old  church  clock. 

And  the  bewildered  chimes. 


54  ELIA. 

Good  master  Empedocles,  you  are  welcome.  It  is  long  since 
you  went  a  salamander-gathering  down  Mina.  Worse  than  sam- 
phire-picking by  some  odds.  'Tis  a  mercy  your  worship  did  not 
singe  your  mustachios. 

Ha  !  Cleombrotus !  and  what  salads  in  faith  did  you  light  upon 
at  the  bottom  of  the  Mediterranean  !  You  were  founder,  I  take 
it,  of  the  disinterested  sect  of  the  Calenturists. 

Gebir,  my  old  free-mason,  and  prince  of  plasterers  at  Babel, 
bring  in  your  trowel,  most  Ancient  Grand !  You  have  claim  to 
a  seat  here  at  my  right  hand,  as  patron  of  the  stammerers.  You 
left  your  work,  if  I  remember  Herodotus  correctly,  at  eight 
hundred  million  toises,  or  thereabout,  above  the  level  of  the  sea. 
Bless  us,  what  a  long  bell  you  must  have  pulled,  to  call  your  top 
workmen  to  their  nunchion  on  the  low  grounds  of  Shinar.  Or  did 
you  send  up  your  garlic  and  onions  by  a  rocket  ?  I  am  a  rogue  if 
I  am  not  ashamed  to  show  you  our  Monument  on  Fish-street  Hill, 
after  your  altitudes.     Yet  we  think  it  somewhat. 

What,  the  magnanimous  Alexander  in  tears  ? — cry,  baby,  put 
its  finger  in  its  eye,  it  shall  have  another  globe,  round  as  an 
orange,  pretty  moppet ! 

Mister  Adams 'odso,  I  honor  your  coat — pray  do  us  the 

favor  to  read  to  us  that  sermon,  which  you  lent  to  Mistress  Slip- 
slop— ^the  twenty  and  second  in  your  portmanteau  there — on 
Female  Incontinence — the  same — it  will  come  in  most  irre- 
levantly and  impertinently  seasonable  to  the  time  of  the  day. 

Good  Master  Raymund  Lully,  ygu  look  wise.  Pray  correct 
that  error. 

Duns,  spare  your  definitions.  I  must  fine  you  a  bumper,  or  a 
paradox.  We  will  have  nothing  said  or  done  syllogistically  this 
day.  Remove  those  logical  forms,  waiter,  that  no  gentleman 
break  the  tender  shins  of  his  apprehension  stumbling  across  them. 

Master  Stephen,  you  are  late. — Ha !  Cokes,  is  it  you  ? — Ague-* 
cheek,  my  dear  knight,  let  me  pay  my  devoir  to  you. — Master 
Shallow,  your  worship's  poor  servant  to  command. — Master 
Silence,  I  will  use  few  words  with  you. — Slender,  it  shall  go  hard 
if  I  edge  not  you  hi  somewhere. — You  six  will  engross  all  the 
poor  wit  of  the  company  to-day. — I  know  it,  I  know  it. 

Ha !  honest  R ,  my  fine  old  Librarian  of  Ludgate,  time 


ALL  FOOLS'  DAY.  55 


out  of  mind,  art  thou  here  again  ?  Bless  thy  doublet,  it  is  not 
over-new,  threadbare  as  thy  stories : — what  dost  thou  flitting  about 
the  world  at  this  rate  ? — Thy  customers  are  extinct,  defunct,  bed- 
rid, have  ceased  to  read  long  ago. — Thou  goest  still  among  them, 
seeing  if,  peradventure,  thou  canst  hawk  a  volume  or  two. — Good 
Granville  S         ,  thy  last  patron  is  flown. 

King  Pandion,  he  is  dead, 

All  thy  friends  are  lapt  in  lead. — 

Nevertheless,  noble  R ,  come  in,  and  take  your  seat  here, 

between  Armado  and  Quisada  ;  for  in  true  courtesy,  in  gravity, 
in  fantastic  smiling  to  thyself,  in  courteous  smiling  upon  others,  in 
the  goodly  ornature  of  well-apparelled  speech,  and  the  commenda-  , 
tion  of  wise  sentences,  thou  art  nothing  inferior  to  those  accom- 
plished Dons  of  Spain.  The  spirit  of  chivalry  forsake  me  for 
ever,  when  I  forget  thy  singing  the  song  of  Macheath,  which  de- 
clares that  he  might  be  happy  with  either,  situated  between  those 
two  ancient  spinsters — when  I  forget  the  inimitable  formal  love 
which  thou  didst  make,  turning  now  to  the  one,  and  now  to  the 
other,  with  that  Malvolian  smile — as  if  Cervantes,  not  Gay,  had 
written  it  for  his  hero ;  and  as  if  thousands  of  periods  must 
revolve,  before  the  mirror  of  courtesy  could  have  given  his  invidi- 
ous preference  between  a  pair  of  so  goodly-propertied  and  merito- 
rious-equal damsels.         *         *  ***** 

To  descend  from  these  altitudes,  and  not  to  protract  our  Fool's 
Banquet  beyond  its  appropriate  day, — for  I  fear  the  second  of 
April  is  not  many  hours  distant — in  sober  verity  I  will  confess  a 
truth  to  thee,  reader.  I  love  a  Fool — as  naturally,  as  if  I  were 
of  kith  and  kin  to  him.  When  a  child,  with  child-like  apprehen- 
sions, that  dived  not  below  the  surface  of  the  matter,  I  read  those 
Parables — not  guessing  at  the  involved  wisdom — I  had  more 
yearnings  towards  that  simple  architect,  that  built  his  house  upon 
the  sand,  than  I  entertained  for  his  more  cautious  neighbor ;  I 
grudged  at  the  hard  censure  pronounced  upon  the  quiet  soul  that 
kept  his  talent ;  and — prizing  their  simplicity  beyond  the  more 
provident,  and,  to  my  apprehension,  somewhat  unfeminine  wariness 
of  their  competitors — I  felt  a  kindliness,  that  almost  amounted  to 
a  tendre,  for  those  five  thoughtless  virgins. — I  have  never  made  an 


56  ELIA. 

acquaintance  since,  that  lasted ;  or  a  friendship,  that  answered ; 
with  any  that  had  not  some  tincture  of  the  absurd  in  their  charac- 
ters. I  venerate  an  honest  obliquity  of  understanding.  The  more 
laughable  blunders  a  man  shall  commit  in  your  company,  the 
more  tests  he  giveth  you,  that  he  will  not  betray  or  overreach  you. 
I  love  the  safety,  which  a  palpable  hallucination  warrants ;  the 
security,  which  a  word  out  of  season  ratifies.  And  take  my  word 
for  this,  reader,  and  say  a  fool  told  it  you,  if  you  please,  that  he 
who  hath  not  a  dram  of  folly  in  his  mixture,  hath  pounds  of  much 
worse  matter  in  his  composition.  It  is  observed,  that  "  the  fool- 
isher  the  fowl  or  fish, — woodcocks, — dotterels, — cod's-heads,  &c., 
the  finer  the  flesh  thereof,"  and  what  are  commonly  the  world's 
received  fools,  but  such  whereof  the  world  is  not  worthy  ?  and 
what  have  been  some  of  the  kindliest  patterns  of  our  species,  but 
so  many  darlings  of  absurdity,  minions  of  the  goddess,  and  her 
white  boys  ? — Reader,  if  you  wrest  my  words  beyond  their  fair 
construction,  it  is  you,  and  not  I,  that  are  the  April  Fool. 


A  QUAKERS'  MEETING.  '    57   / 


A   QUAKERS'  MEETING 


still-born  Silence  !  thou  that  art 

Flood-gate  of  the  deeper  heart ! 

Offspring  of  a  heavenly  kind  ! 

Frost  o'  the  mouth,  and  thaw  o'  the  mind ! 

Secrecy's  confidant,  and  he 

Who  makes  religion  mystery  ! 

Admiration's  speaking'st  tongue  ! 

Leave,  thy  desert  shades  among. 

Reverend  hermits'  hallow'd  cells, 

Where  retired  devotion  dwells  I 

With  thy  enthusiasms  come, 

Seize  our  tongues,  and  strike  us  dumb  !* 

Reader,  would'st  thou  know  what  true  peace  and  quiet  mean ; 
would 'st  thou  find  a  refuge  from  the  noises  and  clamors  of  the 
multitude  ;  would'st  thou  enjoy  at  once  solitude  and  society ; 
would'st  thou  possess  the  depth  of  thy  own  spirit  in  stillness, 
without  being  shut  out  from  the  consolatory  faces  of  thy  species ; 
would'st  thou  be  alone,  and  yet  accompanied ;  solitary,  yet  not 
desolate  ;  singular,  yet  not  without  some  to  keep  thee  in  counte- 
nance ;  a  unit  in  aggregate  ;  a  simple  in  composite : — come  with 
me  into  a  Quakers'  Meeting. 

Dost  thou  love  silence  deep  as  that  "  before  the  winds  were 
made  ?"  go  not  out  into  the  wilderness,  descend  not  into  the  pro- 
fundities of  the  earth ;  shut  not  up  thy  casements  ;  nor  pour  wax 
into  the  little  cells  of  thy  ears,  with  little  faith'd  self- mistrusting 
Ulysses. — Retire  with  me  into  a  Quakers'  Meeting. 

For  a  man  to  refrain  even  from  good  words,  and  to  hold  his 
peace,  it  is  commendable ;  but  for  a  multitude,  it  is  great 
mastery. 

*  From  "  Poems  of  all  Sorts,"  by  Richard  Fleckno,  1653. 


58  ELIA. 

1 ' 

What  is  the  stillness  of  the  desert,  compared  with  this  place  ? 
what  the  uncommunicating  muteness  of  fishes? — here  the  goddess 
reigns  and  revels. — "  Boreas,  and  Cesias,  and  Argestes  loud,"  do 
not  with  their  inter-confounding  uproars  more  augment  the  brawl 
— nor  the  waves  of  the  blown  Baltic  with  their  clubbed  sounds — 
than  their  opposite  (Silence  her  sacred  self)  is  multiplied  and 
rendered  more  intense  by  numbers,  and  by  sympathy.  She  too 
hath  her  deeps,  that  call  unto  deeps.  Negation  itself  hath  a 
positive  more  and  less ;  and  closed  eyes  would  seem  to  obscure 
the  great  obscurity  of  midnight. 

There  are  wounds  which  an  imperfect  solitude  cannot  heal. 
By  imperfect  I  mean  that  which  a  man  enjoyeth  by  himself.  The 
perfect  is  that  which  he  can  sometimes  attain  in  crowds,  but  no- 
where so  absolutely  as  in  a  Quakers'  Meeting. — Those  first  her- 
mits did  certainly  understand  this  principle,  when  they  retired 
into  Egyptian  solitudes,  not  singly  but  in  shoals,  to  enjoy  one 
another's  want  of  conversation.  The  Carthusian  is  bound  to  his 
brethren  by  this  agreeing  spirit  of  incommunicativeness.  In 
secular  occasions,  what  so  pleasant  as  to  be  reading  a  book  through 
a  long  winter  evening,  with  a  friend  sitting  by — say,  a  wife — he, 
or  she,  too  (if  that  be  probable),  reading  another,  without  inter- 
ruption, or  oral  communication  ? — can  there  be  no  sympathy 
without  the  gabble  of  words  ? — away  with  this  inhuman,  shy,  sin- 
gle, shade  and  cavern-haunting  solitariness.  Give  me,  Master 
Zimmermann,  a  sympathetic  solitude. 

To  pace  alone  in  the  cloisters,  or  side  aisles  of  some  cathedral, 
time-stricken ; 

Or  under  hanging  mountains. 
Or  by  the  fall  of  fountains  ; 

is  but  a  vulgar  luxury,  compared  with  that  which  those  enjoy, 
who  come  together  for  the  purposes  of  more  complete,  abstracted 
solitude.  This  is  the  loneliness  "  to  be  felt." — The  Abbey 
Church  of  Westminster  hath  nothing  so  solemn,  so  spirit-soothing, 
as  the  naked  walls  and  benches  of  a  Quakers'  Meeting.  Here 
are  no  tombs,  no  inscriptions, 

Sands,  ignoble  things, 


Dropt  from  the  ruined  sides  of  kings — 


A  QUAKERS'  MEETING.  59 

but  here  is  something,  which  throws  Antiquity  herself  into  the 
fore-ground — Silence — eldest  of  things — language  of  old  Night — 
primitive  Discourser — to  which  the  insolent  decays  of  moulder- 
ing grandeur  have  but  arrived  by  a  violent,  and,  as  we  may 
say,  unnatural  progression. 

How  reverend  is  the  view  of  these  hushed  heads, 
Looking  tranquillity  ! 

Nothing-plotting,  naught-caballing,  unmischievous  synod  !  con- 
vocation without  intrigue  !  parliament  without  debate !  what  a 
lesson  dost  thou  read  to  council,  and  to  consistory  ! — if  my  pen 
treat  of  you  lightly — as  haply  it  will  wander — yet  my  spirit  hath 
gravely  felt  the  wisdom  of  your  custom,  when  sitting  among  you 
in  deepest  peace,  which  some  out-welling  tears  would  rather  con- 
firm than  disturb,  I  have  reverted  to  the  times  of  your  beginnings, 
and  the  sowings  of  the  seed  by  Fox  and  Dewesbury.  I  have 
witnessed  that,  which  brought  before  my  eyes  your  heroic  tran- 
quillity, inflexible  to  the  rude  jests  and  serious  violences  of  the 
insolent  soldiery,  republican  or  royalist,  sent  to  molest  you — for 
ye  sate  betwixt  the  fires  of  two  persecutions,  the  outcast  and  off- 
scouring  of  church  and  presbytery.  I  have  seen  the  reeling  sea- 
ruffian,  who  had  wandered  into  your  receptacle,  with  the  avowed 
intention  of  disturbing  your  quiet,  from  the  very  spirit  of  the 
place  receive  in  a  moment  a  new  heart,  and  presently  sit  among 
ye  as  a  lamb  amidst  lambs.  And  I  remember  Penn  before  his 
accusers,  and  Fox  in  the  bail-dock,  where  he  was  lifted  up  in 
spirit,  as  he  tells  us,  and  "  the  Judge  and  the  Jury  became  as 
dead  men  under  his  feet." 

Reader,  if  you  are  not  acquainted  with  it,  I  would  recommend 
to  you,  above  all  church-narratives,  to  read  Sewel's  History  of 
the  Quakers.  It  is  in  folio,  and  is  the  abstract  of  the  Journals  of 
Fox  and  the  primitive  Friends.  It  is  far  more  edifying  and  afl^ect- 
ing  than  anything  you  will  read  of  Wesley  and  his  colleagues. 
Here  is  nothing  to  stagger  you,  nothing  to  make  you  mistrust,  no 
suspicion  of  alloy,  no  drop  or  dreg  of  the  worldly  or  ambitious 
spirit.  You  will  here  read  the  true  story  of  that  much-injured, 
ridiculed  man  (who  perhaps  hath  been  a  by- word  in  your  mouth), 
— ^James  Naylor :  what  dreadful  sufferings,  with  what  patience. 


60  ELIA. 


he  endured,  even  to  the  boring  through  of  his  tongue  with  red- 
hot  irons,  without  a  murmur  ;  and  with  what  strength  of  mind, 
when  the  delusion  he  had  fallen  into,  which  they  stigmatised  for 
blasphemy,  had  given  way  to  clearer  thoughts,  he  could  renounce 
his  error,  in  a  strain  of  the  beautifullest  humility,  yet  keep  his 
first  grounds,  and  be  a  Quaker  still ! — so  different  from  the  prac- 
tice of  your  common  converts  from  enthusiasm,  who,  when  they 
apostatize,  apostatize  all,  and  think  they  can  never  get  far  enough 
from  the  society  of  their  former  errors,  even  to  the  renunciation 
of  some  saving  truths,  with  which  they  had  been  mingled,  not 
implicated. 

Get  the  Writings  of  John  Woolman  by  heart ;  and  love  the 
early  Quakers. 

How  far  the  followers  of  these  good  men  in  our  days  have  kept 
to  the  primitive  spirit,  or  in  what  proportion  they  have  substituted 
formality  for  it,  the  Judge  of  Spirits  can  alone  determine.  I  have 
seen  faces  in  their  assemblies,  upon  which  the  dove  sate  visibly 
brooding.  Others  again  I  have  watched,  when  my  thoughts 
should  have  been  better  engaged,  in  which  I  could  possibly  detect 
nothing  but  a  blank  inanity.  But  quiet  was  in  all,  and  the  dispo- 
sition to  unanimity,  and  the  absence  of  the  fierce  controversial 
workings.  If  the  spiritual  pretensions  of  the  Quakers  have  abated, 
at  leasl  they  make  few  pretences.  Hypocrites  they  certainly 
are  not,  in  their  preaching.  It  is  seldom  indeed  that  you  shall 
see  one  get  up  amongst  them  to  hold  forth.  Only  now  and  then 
a  trembling,  female,  generally  ancient,  voice  is  heard — you  can- 
not guess  from  what  part  of  the  meeting  it  proceeds — with  a  low, 
buzzing  musical  sound,  laying  out  a  few  words  which  "she 
thought  might  suit  the  condition  of  some  present,"  with  a  quaking 
diffidence,  which  leaves  no  possibility  of  supposing  that  anything 
of  female  vanity  was  mixed  up,  where  the  tones  were  so  full  of 
tenderness,  and  a  restraining  modesty.  The  men,  for  what  I  have 
observed,  speak  seldomer. 

Once  only,  and  it  was  some  years  ago,  I  witnessed  a  sample  of 
the  old  Foxian  orgasm.  It  was  a  man  of  giant  stature,  who,  as 
Wordsworth  phrases  it,  might  have  danced  "  from  head  to  foot 
equipt  in  iron  mail."  His  frame  was  of  iron  too.  But  lie  was 
malleable.     I  saw  him  shake  all  over  with  the  spirit — I  dare  not 


A  QUAKERS'  MEETING.  61 

say  of  delusion.  The  strivings  of  the  outer  man  were  unutter- 
able ;  he  seemed  not  to  speak,  but  to  be  spoken  from.  I  saw  the 
strong  man  bowed  down,  and  his  knees  to  fail ;  his  joints  all 
seemed  loosening :  it  was  a  figure  to  set  off  against  Paul  Preach- 
ing ;  the  words  he  uttered  were  few  and  sound  ;  he  was  evidently- 
resisting  his  will — keeping  down  his  own  word- wisdom  with  more 
mighty  effort,  than  the  world's  orators  strain  for  theirs.  "  He  had 
been  a  wit  in  his  youth,"  he  told  us,  with  expressions  of  a  sober 
remorse.  And  it  was  not  till  long  after  the  impression  had  begun 
to  wear  away,  that  I  was  enabled,  with  something  like  a  smile,  to 
recall  the  striking  incongruity  of  the  confession — understanding 
the  term  in  its  worldly  acceptation — with  the  frame  and  physiog- 
nomy of  the  person  before  me.  His  brow  would  have  scared 
away  the  Levities — the  Jocos  Risusque — faster  than  the  Loves 
fled  the  face  of  Dis  at  Enna.  By  wit,  even  in  his  youth,  I  will 
be  sworn  he  understood  something  far  within  the  limits  of  an 
allowable  liberty. 

More  frequently  the  Meeting  is  broken  up  without  a  word  hav- 
ing been  spoken.  But  the  mind  has  been  fed.  You  go  away 
with  a  sermon  not  made  with  hands.  You  have  been  in  the 
milder  caverns  of  Trophonius  ;  or  as  in  some  den,  where  that 
fiercest  and  savagest  of  all  wild  creatures,  the  Tongue,  that  un- 
ruly member,  has  strangely  lain  tied  up  and  captive.  You  have 
bathed  with  stillness.  O  when  the  spirit  is  sore  fretted,  even  tired 
to  sickness  of  the  janglings  and  nonsense-noises  of  the  world, 
what  a  balm  and  a  solace  it  is,  to  go  and  seat  yourself,  for  a  quiet 
half  hour,  upon  some  undisputed  corner  of  a  bench,  among  the 
gentle  Quakers ! 

Their  garb  and  stillness  conjoined,  present  a  uniformity,  tran- 
quil and  herd-like — as  in  the  pasture — "  forty  feeding  like  one." 

The  very  garments  of  a  Quaker  seem  incapable  of  receiving 
a  soil ;  and  cleanliness  in  them  to  be  something  more  than  the 
absence  of  its  contrary.  Every  Quakeress  is  a  lily;  and  wlien 
they  come  up  in  bands  to  their  Whitsun-conferences,  whitening 
the  easterly  streets  of  the  metropolis,  from  all  parts  of  the  United 
Kingdom,  they  show  like  tioops  of  the  Shining  Ones. 


62  ELIA. 


THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  SCHOOLMASTER. 


My  reading  has  been  lamentably  desultory  and  immethodical. 
Odd,  out  of  the  way,  old  English  plays,  and  treatises,  have  sup- 
plied me  with  most  of  my  notions,  and  ways  of  feeling.  In  every- 
thing that  relates  to  science,  I  am  a  whole  EncyclopEedia  behind 
the  rest  of  the  world.  I  should  have  scarcely  cut  a  figure  among 
the  franklins,  or  country  gentlemen,  in  king  John's  days.  I  know 
less  geography  than  a  school-boy  of  six  weeks'  standing.  To  me 
a  map  of  old  Ortelius  is  as  authentic  as  Arrowsmith.  I  do  not 
know  whereabout  Africa  merges  into  Asia  ;  whether  Ethiopia  lie 
in  one  or  other  of  those  great  divisions  ;  nor  can  form  the  remot- 
est conjecture  of  the  position  of  New  South  Wales,  or  Van  Die- 
men's  Land.  Yet  do  I  hold  a  correspondence  with  a  very  dear 
friend  in  the  first-named  of  these  two  Terree  Incognitse.  I  have 
no  astronomy.  I  do  not  know  where  to  look  for  the  Bear,  or 
Charles's  Wain ;  the  place  of  any  star ;  or  the  name  of  any  of 
them  at  sight.  I  guess  at  Venus  only  by  her  brightness — and  if 
the  sun  on  some  portentous  morn  were  to  make  his  first  appear- 
ance in  the  West,  I  verily  believe,  that,  while  all  the  world  were 
gasping  in  apprehension  about  me,  I  alone  should  stand  unterri- 
fied,  from  sheer  incuriosity  and  want  of  observation.  Of  history 
and  chronology  I  possess  some  vague  points,  such  as  one  cannot 
help  picking  up  in  the  course  of  miscellaneous  study  ;  but  I  never 
deliberately  sat  down  to  a  chronicle,  even  of  my  own  country.  I 
have  most  dim  apprehensions  of  the  four  great  monarchies ;  and 
sometimes  the  Assyrian,  sometimes  the  Persian,  floats  as  first,  in 
my  fancy.  I  make  the  widest  conjectures  concerning  Egypt, 
and  her  shepherd  kings.  My  friend  M.,  with  great  pains-taking, 
got  me  to  think  I  understood  the  first  proposition  in  Euclid,  but 


THE  OLD  ANb  THE  NEW  SCHOOLMASTER.  63 

gave  me  over  in  despair  at  the  second.  I  am  entirely  unacquaint- 
ed with  the  modern  languages ;  and,  like  a  better  man  than  my- 
self, have  "  small  Latin  and  less  Greek."  I  am  a  stranger  to  the 
shapes  and  texture  of  the  commonest  trees,  herbs,  flowers — not 
from  the  circumstance  of  my  being  town-born — for  I  should  have 
brought  the  same  inobservant  spirit  into  the  world  with  me,  had  I 
first  seen  it  "  on  Devon's  leafy  shores," — and  am  no  less  at  a  loss 
among  purely  town-objects,  tools,  engines,  mechanic  processes. 
Not  that  I  affect  ignorance — but  my  head  has  not  many  mansions, 
nor  spacious ;  and  I  have  been  obliged  to  fill  it  with  such  cabinet 
curiosities  as  it  can  hold  without  aching.  I  sometimes  wonder 
how  I  have  passed  my  probation  with  so  little  discredit  in  the 
world,  as  I  have  done,  upon  so  meagre  a  stock.  But  the  fact  is, 
a  man  may  do  very  well  with  a  very  little  knowledge,  and  scarce 
be  found  out,  in  mixed  company ;  everybody  is  so  much  more 
ready  to  produce  his  own,  than  to  call  for  a  display  of  your  ac- 
quisitions. But  in  a  tete-d-tele  there  is  no  shuffling.  The  truth 
will  out.  There  is  nothing  which  I  dread  so  much,  as  the  being 
left  alone  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour  with  a  sensible,  well-informed 
man  that  does  not  know  me.  I  lately  got  into  a  dilemma  of  this 
sort. 

In  one  of  my  daily  jaunts  between  Bishopsgate  and  Shackle- 
well,  the  coach  stopped  to  take  up  a  staid-looking  gentleman, 
about  the  wrong  side  of  thirty,  who  was  giving  his  parting  direc- 
tions (while  the  steps  were  adjusting),  in  a  tone  of  mild  authority, 
to  a  tall  youth,  who  seemed  to  be  neither  his  clerk,  his  son,  nor 
his  servant,  but  something  partaking  of  all  three.  The  youth 
was  dismissed,  and  we  drove  on.  "As  we  were  the  sole  passen- 
gers, he  naturally  enough  addressed  his  conversation  to  me  ;  and 
we  discussed  the  merits  of  the  fare,  the  civility  and  punctuality 
of  the  driver ;  the  circumstance  of  an  opposition  coach  having 
been  lately  set  up,  with  the  probabilities  of  its  success — to  all 
which  I  was  enabled  to  return  pretty  satisfactory  answers,  having 
bei^n  drilled  into  this  kind  of  etiquette  by  some  years'  daily  prac- 
tice of  riding  to  and  fro  in  the  stage  aforesaid — when  he  suddenly 
alarmed  me  by  a  startling  question,  whether  I  had  seen  the  show 
of  prize  cattle  that  morning  in  Smithfield  ?  Now  as  I  had  not 
seen  it,  and  do  not  greatly  care  for  such  sort  of  exhibitions,  I  was 


64  ELIA. 

obliged  to  return  a  cold  negative.  He  seemed  a  little  mortified, 
as  well  as  astonished,  at  my  declaration,  as  (it  appeared)  he  was 
just  come  fresh  from  the  sight,  and  doubtless  had  hoped  to  com- 
pare notes  on  the  subject.  However,  he  assured  me  that  I  had 
lost  a  fine  treat,  as  it  far  exceeded  the  show  of  last  year.  We 
were  now  approaching  Norton  Falgate,  when  the  sight  of  some 
shop-goods  ticketed  freshened  him  up  into  a  dissertation  upon  the 
cheapness  of  cottons  this  spring.  I  was  now  a  little  in  heart,  as 
the  nature  of  my  morning  avocations  had  brought  me  into  some 
sort  of  familiarity  with  the  raw  material ;  and  I  was  surprised  to 
find  how  eloquent  I  was  becoming  on  the  state  of  the  India  mar- 
ket— when,  presently,  he  dashed  my  incipient  vanity  to  the  earth 
at  once,  by  inquiring  whether  I  had  ever  made  any  calculation 
as  to  the  value  of  the  rental  of  all  the  retail  shops  in  London. 
Had  he  asked  of  me,  what  song  the  Sirens  sang,  or  what  name 
Achilles  assumed  when  he  hid  himself  among  the  women,  I 
might,  with  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  have  hazarded  a  "  wide  solu- 
tion."* My  companion  saw  my  embarrassment,  and,  the  alms- 
houses beyond  Shoreditch  just  coming  in  view,  with  great  good- 
nature and  dexterity  shifled  his  conversation  to  the  subject  of 
public  charities ;  which  led  to  the  comparative  merits  of  provision 
for  the  poor  in  past  and  present  times,  with  observations  on  the 
old  monastic  institutions,  and  charitable  orders  ;  but,  finding  me 
rather  dimly  impressed  with  some  glimmering  notions  from  old 
poetic  associations,  than  strongly  fortified  with  any  speculations 
reducible  to  calculation  on  the  subject,  he  gave  the  matter  up  ; 
and,  the  country  beginning  to  open  more  and  more  upon  us,  as 
we  approached  the  turnpike  at  Kingsland  (the  destined  termina- 
tion of  his  journey),  he  put  a  home  thrust  upon  me,  in  the  most 
unfortunate  position  he  could  have  chosen,  by  advancing  some 
queries  relative  to  the  North  Pole  Expedition.  While  I  was  mut- 
tering out  something  about  the  Panorama  of  those  strange  regions 
(which  I  had  actually  seen),  by  way  of  parrying  the  question, 
the  coach  stopping  relieved  me  from  any  further  apprehensions. 
My  companion  getting  out,  lefl  me  in  the  comfortable  possession 
of  my  ignorance ;  and  I  heard  him,  as  he  went  off,  putting  ques- 

*  Urn  Burial. 


THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  SCHOOLMASTER.  65 

tions  to  an  outside  passenger,  who  had  alighted  with  him,  regarding 
an  epidemic  disorder,  that  had  been  rife  about  Dalston ;  and 
which  my  friend  assured  him  had  gone  through  five  or. six  schools 
in  that  neighborhood.  The  truth  now  flashed  upon  me,  that  my 
companion  was  a  schoolmaster ;  and  that  the  youth,  whom  he  had 
parted  from  at  our  first  acquaintance,  must  have  been  one  of  the 
bigger  boys,  or  the  usher.  He  was  evidently  a  kind-hearted 
man,  who  did  not  seem  so  much  desirous  of  provoking  discussion 
by  the  questions  which  he  put,  as  of  obtaining  information  at  any 
rate.  It  did  not  appear  that  he  took  any  interest,  either,  in  such 
kind  of  inquiries,  for  their  own  sake ;  but  that  he  was  in  some 
way  bound  to  seek  for  knowledge.  A  greenish-colored  coat, 
which  he  had  on,  forbade  me  to  surmise  that  he  was  a  clergyman. 
The  adventure  gave  birth  to  some  reflections  on  the  difference 
between  persons  of  his  profession  in  past  and  present  times. 
ft  Rest  to  the  souls  of  those  fine  old  Pedagogues  ;  the  breed,  long 
since  extinct,  of  the  Lilys,  and  the  Linacres  :  who  believing  that 
all  learning  was  contained  in  the  languages  which  they  taught, 
and  despising  every  other  acquirement  as  superficial  and  useless, 
came  to  their  task  as  to  a  sport !  Passing  from  infancy  to  age, 
they  dreamed  away  all  their  days  as  in  a  grammar-school.  Re- 
volving in  a  perpetual  cycle  of  declensions,  conjugations,  syntaxes, 
and  prosodies ;  renewing  constantly  the  occupations  which  had 
charmed  their  studious  childhood  ;  rehearsing  continually  the 
part  of  the  past ;  life  must  have  slipped  from  them  at  last  like 
one  day.  They  were  always  in  their  first  garden,  reaping  har. 
vests  of  their  golden  time,  among  their  Flori  and  their  Spici- 
legia  ;  in  Arcadia  still,  but  kings ;  the  ferule  of  their  sway  not 
much  harsher,  but  of  like  dignity  with  that  mild  sceptre  attributed 
to  king  Basileus  ;  the  Greek  and  Latin,  their  stately  Pamela  and 
their  Philoclea ;  with  the  occasional  duncery  of  some  untoward 
tyro,  serving  for  a  refreshing  interlude  of  a  Mopsa,  or  a  clown 
Damoetas ! 

With  what  a  savor  doth  the  Preface  to  Colet's,  or  (as  it  is 
sometimes  called)  Paul's  Accidence,  set  forth!  "To^exhort 
every  man  to  the  learning  of  grammar,  that  intendeth  to  attain 
the  understanding  of  the  tongues,  wherein  is  contained  a  great 
treasury  of  wisdom  and  knowledge,  it  would  seem  but  vain  and 

PART  I.  6 


66  ELIA. 

lost  labor  ;  for  so  much  as  it  is  known,  that  nothing  can  surely 
be  ended,  whose  beginning  is  either  feeble  or  faulty  ;  and  no 
building  be  perfect  whereas  the  foundation  and  groundwork  is 
ready  to  fall,  and  unable  to  uphold  the  burden  of  the  frame." 
How  well  doth  this  stately  preamble  (comparable  with  those 
which  Milton  commendeth  as  "  having  been  the  usage  to  prefix 
to  some  solemn  law,  then  first  promulgated  by  Solon,  or  Lycur- 
gus")  correspond  with  and  illustrate  that  pious  zeal  for  conformity, 
expressed  in  a  succeeding  clause,  which  would  fence  about  gram- 
mar-rules with  the  severity  of  faith  articles  ! — "  as  for  the  diver- 
sity of  grammars,  it  is  well  profitably  taken  away  by  the  king 
majesties  wisdom,  who  foreseeing  the  inconvenience,  and  favora- 
bly providing  the  remedie,  caused  one  kind  of  grammar  by  sundry 
learned  men  to  be  diligently  drawn,  and  so  to  be  set  out,  only 
everywhere  to  be  taught  for  the  use  of  learners,  and  for  the 
hurt  in  changing  of  schoolmaisters."  What  a,  gusto  in  that  which 
follows :  "  wherein  it  is  profitable  that  he  [the  pupil]  can  orderly 
decline  his  noun,  and  his  verb."     His  noun! 

The  fine  dream  is  fading  away  fast ;  and  the  least  concern  of 
a  teacher  in  the  present  day  is  to  inculcate  grammar-rules. 

The  modern  schoolmaster  is  expected  to  know  a  little  of  every- 
thing, because  his  pupil  is  required  not  to  be  entirely  ignorant  of 
anything.  He  must  be  superficially,  if  I  may  so  say,  omniscient. 
He  is  to  know  something  of  pneumatics ;  of  chemistry  ;  of  what- 
ever is  curious,  or  proper  to  excite  the  attention  of  the  youthful 
mind ;  an  insight  into  mechanics  is  desirable,  with  a  touch  of 
statistics;  the  quality  of  soils,  &;c.,  botany,  the  constitution  of  his 
country,  cum  multls  aids.  You  may  get  a  notion  of  some  part  of 
his  expected  duties  by  consulting  the  famous  Tractate  on  Educa- 
tion addressed  to  Mr.  Hartlib. 

All  these  things — these,  or  the  desire  of  them — he  is  expected 
to  instil,  not  by  set  lessons  from  professors,  which  he  may  charge  ' 
in  the  bill,  but  at  school-intervals,  as  he  walks  the  streets,  or 
saunters  through  green  fields  (those  natural  instructors),  with  his 
pupils.*  The  least  part  of  what  is  expected  from  him,  is  to  be 
done  in  school-hours.  He  must  insinuate  knowledge  at  the 
mollia  lempora  fanclL  He  must  seize  every  occasion — the  season 
of  the  year — the  time  of  the  day — a  passing  cloud — a  rainbow — 


THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  SCHOOLMASTER.  67 

a  waggon  of  hay — a  regiment  of  soldiers  going  by — to  inculcate 
something  useful.  He  can  receive  no  pleasure  from  a  casual 
glimpse  of  Nature,  but  must  catch  at  it  as  an  object  of  instruc- 
tion. He  must  interpret  beauty  into  the*  picturesque.  He  can- 
not relish  a  beggar-man,  or  a  gipsy,  for  thihking  of  the  suitable 
improvement.  Nothing  comes  to  him,  not  spoiled  by  the  sophis- 
ticating medium  of  moral  uses.  The  Universe — that  Great  Book, 
as  it  has  been  called — is  to  him  indeed,  to  all  intents^  and  pur- 
poses, a  book,  out  of  which  he  is  doomed  to  read  tedious  homilies  to 
distasting  school-boys. — Vacations  themselves  are  none  to  him,  he 
is  only  rather  worse  off  than  before  ;  for  commonly  he  has  some 
intrusive  upper-boy  fastened  upon  him  at  such  times ;  some  cadet 
of  a  great  family ;  some  neglected  lump  of  nobility,  or  gentry ; 
that  he  must  drag  after  him  to  the  play,  to  the  Panorama,  to  Mr. 
Bartley's  Orrery,  to  the  Panopticon,  or  into  the  country,  to  a 
friend's  house,  or  his  favorite  watering-place.  Wherever  he 
goes,  this  uneasy  shadow  attends  him.  A  boy  is  at  his  board,  and 
in  his  path,  and  in  all  his  movements.  He  is  boy-rid,  sick  of 
perpetual  boy. 

Boys  are  capital  fellows  in  their  own  way,  among  their  mates ; 
but  they  are  unwholesome  companions  for  grown  people.  The  re- 
straint is  felt  no  less  on  the  one  side,  than  on  the  other. — Even  a 
child,  that  "  plaything  for  an  hour,"  tires  always.  The  noises  of 
♦  children,  playing  their  own  fancies — as  I  now  hearken  to  them  by 
fits,  sporting  on  the  green  before  my  window,  while  I  am  engaged 
in  these  grave  speculations  at  my  neat  suburban  retreat  at  Shackle- 
well — by  distance  made  more  sweet — inexpressibly  take  from 
the  labor  of  «iiiy  task.  It  is  like  writing  to  music.  They  seem 
to  modulate  my  periods.  They  ought  at  least  to  do  so — for  in  the 
voice  of  that  tender  age  there  is  a  kind  of  poetry,  far  unlike  the 
harsh  prose-accents  of  man's  conversation. — I  should  but  spoil 
their  sport,  and  diminish  my  own  sympathy  for  them,  by  mingling 
in  their  pastime. 

1  would  not  be  domesticated  all  my  days  with  a  person  of  very 
superior  capacity  to  my  own — not,  if  I  know  myself  at  all,  from 
any  considerations  of  jealousy  or  self-comparison,  for  the  occa- 
sional communion  with  such  minds  has  constituted  the  fortune  and 
felicity  of  my  life — but  the  habit  of  too  constant  intercourse  with 


68  ELIA. 

spirits  above  you,  instead  of  raising  you,  keeps  you  down.  Too 
frequent  doses  of  original  thinking  from  others,  restrain  what 
lesser  portion  of  that  faculty  you  may  possess  of  your  own.  You 
get  entangled  in  another  man's  mind,  even  as  you  lose  yourself 
in  another  man's  founds.  You  are  walking  with  a  tall 
yarlet,  whose  strides  out-pace  yours  to  lassitude.  The  con- 
stant operation  of  such  potent  agency  would  reduce  me,  I  am 
convinced,  to  imbecility.  You  may  derive  thoughts  from  others ; 
your  way  of  thinking,  the  mould  in  which  your  thoughts  are  cast, 
must  be  your  own.  Intellect  may  be  imparted,  but  not  each 
man's  intellectual  frame. — 

As  little  as  I  should  wish  to  be  always  thus  dragged  upward,  as 
little  (or  rather  still  less)  is  it  desirable  to  be  stunted  downwards 
by  your  associates.  The  trumpet  does  not  more  stun  you  by  its 
loudness,  than  a  whisper  teases  you  by  its  provoking  inaudibility. 

Why  are  we  never  quite  at  our  ease  in  the  presence  of  a  school- 
master ? — because  we  are  conscious  that  he  is  not  quite  at  his 
ease  in  ours.  He  is  awkward,  and  out  of  place,  in  the  society  of 
his  equals.  He  comes  like  Gulliver  from  among  his  little  people, 
and  he  cannot  fit  the  stature  of  his  understanding  to  yours.  He 
cannot  meet  you  on  the  square.  He  wants  a  point  given  him, 
like  an  indifferent  whist-player.  He  is  so  used  to  teaching,  that 
he  wants  to  be  teaching  you.  One  of  these  professors,  upon  my 
complaining  that  these  little  sketches  of  mine  were  anything  but  « 
methodical,  and  that  I  was  unable  to  make  them  otherwise,  kindly 
offered  to  instruct  me  in  the  method  by  which  young  gentlemen 
in  liis  seminary  were  taught  to  compose  English  themes. — The 
jests  of  a  schoolmaster  are  coarse,  or  thin.  They  do  not  tell  out 
of  school.  He  is  under  the  restraint  of  a  formal  or  didactive  hy- 
pocrisy in  company,  as  a  clergyman  is  under  a  moral  one.  .  He 
can  no  more  let  his  intellect  loose  in  society,  than  the  other  can 
his  inclinations. — He  is  forlorn  among  his  coevals ;  his  juniors  * 
cannot  be  his  friends. 

"  I  take  blame  to  myself,"  said  a  sensible  man  of  this  profes- 
sion, writing  to  a  friend  respecting  a  youth  who  had  quitted  his 
school  abruptly,  "  that  your  nephew  was  not  more  attached  to  me. 
But  persons  in  my  situation  are  more  to  be  pitied,  than  can  well 
be  imagined.     We  are  surrounded  by  young,  and,  consequently, 


THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  SCHOOLMASTER.  69 

ardently  affectionate  hearts,  but  we  can  never  hope  to  share  an 
atom  of  their  affections.  The  relation  of  master  and  scholar  for- 
bids this.  How  pleasing  this  must  be  to  you,  how  1  envy  your  feel- 
ings !  my  friends  will  sometimes  say  to  me,  when  they  see  young 
men  whom  I  have  educated,  return  after  some  years'  absence 
from  school,  their  eyes  shining  with  pleasure,  while  they  shake 
hands  with  their  old  master,  bringing  a  present  of  game  to  me, 
or  a  toy  to  my  wife,  and  thanking  me  in  the  warmest  terms  for 
my  care  of  their  education.  A  holiday  is  begged  for  the  boys ; 
the  house  is  a  scene  of  happiness  ;  I,  only,  am  sad  at  heart. — This 
fine-spirited  and  warm-hearted  youth,  who  fancies  he  repays  his 
master  with  gratitude  for  the  care  of  his  boyish  years — this  young 
man — in  the  eight  long  years  I  watched  over  him  with  a  parent's 
anxiety,  never  could  repay  me  with  one  look  of  genuine  feeling. 
He  was  proud,  when  I  praised ;  he  was  submissive,  when  I  re- 
proved him  ;  but  he  did  never  love  me — and  what  he  now  mis- 
takes for  gratitude  and  kindness  for  me,  is  but  the  pleasant 
sensation,  which  all  persons  feel  at  revisiting  the  scenes  of  their 
boyish  hopes  and  fears ;  and  the  seeing  on  equal  terms  the  man 
they  were  accustomed  to  look  up  to  with  reverence.  My  wife 
too,'*  this  interesting  correspondent  goes  on  to  say,  "  my  once 
darling  Anna,  is  the  wife  of  a  schoolmaster. — When  I  married 
her — knowing  that  the  wife  of  a  schoolmaster  ought  to  be  a  busy 
notable  creature,  and  fearing  that  my  gentle  Anna  would  ill  supply 
the  loss  of  my  dear  bustling  mother,  just  then  dead,  who  never 
sat  still,  was  in  every  part  of  the  house  in  a  moment,  and  whom 
I  was  obliged  sometimes  to  threaten  to  fasten  down  in  a  chair,  to 
save  her  from  fatiguing  herself  to  death — I  expressed  my  fears 
that  I  was  bringing  her  into  a  way  of  life  unsuitable  to  her ;  and 
she,  who  loved  me  tenderly,  promised  for  my  sake  to  exert  her- 
self to  perform  the  duties  of  her  new  situation.  She  promised, 
and  she  has  kept  her  word.  What  wonders  will  not  woman's  love 
perform  ? — My  house  is  managed  with  a  propriety  and  decorum 
unknown  in  other  schools  ;  my  boys  are  well  fed,  look  healthy, 
and  have  every  proper  accommodation ;  and  all  this  performed 
with  a  careful  economy,  that  never  descends  to  meanness.  But 
I  have  lost  my  gentle  helpless  Anna  ! — When  we  sit  down  to  en- 
joy an  hour  of  repose  after  the  fatigues  of  the  day,  I  am  compelled 


70  ELTA. 

to  listen  to  what  have  been  her  useful  (and  they  are  really  useful) 
employments  through  the  day,  and  what  she  proposes  for  her  to- 
morrow's task.  Her  heart  and  her  features  are  changed  by  the 
duties  of  her  situation.  To  the  boys  she  never  appears  other 
than  the  master'' s  wife,  and  she  looks  up  to  me  as  the  boys^  master  ; 
to  whom  all  show  of  love  and  affection  would  be  highly  improper, 
and  unbecoming  the  dignity  of  her  situation  and  mine.  Yet  this 
my  gratitude  forbids  me  to  hint  to  her.  For  my  sake  she  sub- 
mitted to  be  this  altered  creature,  and  can  I  reproach  her  for  it  ?" 
For  the  communication  of  this  letter,  I  am  indebted  to  my  cousin 
Bridget. 


IMPERFECT  SYMPATHIES.  71 


IMPERFECT  SYMPATHIES 


I  am  of  a  constitution  so  general,  that  it  consorts  and  sympathizeth  with 
all  things ;  I  have  no  antipathy,  or  rather  idiosyncrasy  in  anything.  Those 
natural  repugnances  do  not  touch  me,  nor  do  I  behold  with  prejudice  the 
French,  Italian,  Spaniard,  or  Dutch. — Religio  Medici. 

That  the  author  of  the  Religio  Medici,  mounted  upon  the  airy- 
stilts  of  abstraction,  conversant  about  notional  and  conjectural 
essences ;  in  whose  categories  of  Being  the  possible  took  the  up- 
per hand  of  the  actual ;  should  have  overlooked  the  impertinent 
individualities  of  such  poor  concretions  as  mankind,  is  not  much 
to  be  admired.  It  is  rather  to  be  wondered  at,  that  in  the  genus 
of  animals  he  should  have  condescended  to  distinguish  that  spe- 
cies at  all.  For  myself — earth-bound  and  fettered  to  the  scene 
of  my  activities, — 

Standing  on  earth,  not  rapt  above  the  sky, 

I  confess  that  I  do  feel  the  differences  of  mankind,  national  or  in- 
dividual, to  an  unhealthy  excess.  I  can  look  with  no  indifferent 
eye  upon  things  or  persons.  Whatever  is,  is  to  me  a  matter  of 
taste  or  distaste  ;  or  when  once  it  becomes  indifferent,  it  begins 
to  be  disrelishing.  I  am,  in  plainer  words,  a  bundle  of  preju- 
dices— made  up  of  likings  and  dislikings — the  veriest  thrall  to 
sympathies,  apathies,  antipathies.  In  a  certain  sense,  I  hope  it 
may  be  said  of  me  that  I  am  a  lover  of  my  species.  I  can  feel 
for  all  indifferently,  but  I  cannot  feel  towards  all  equally.  The 
more  purely-English  word  that  expresses  sympathy,  will  better 
explain  my  meaning.     I  can  be  a  friend  to  a  worthy  man,  who 


72  ELIA. 

upon  another  account  cannot  be  my  mate  or  felhw.     I  cannot  like 
all  people  alike.* 

I  have  been  trying  all  my  life  to  like  Scotchmen,  and  am 
obliged  to  desist  from  the  experiment  in  despair.  They  cannot 
like  me — and  in  truth,  I  never  knew  one  of  that  nation  who  at- 
tempted to  do  it.  There  is  something  more  plain  and  ingenuous 
in  their  mode  of  proceeding.  We  know  one  another  at  first 
sight.  There  is  an  order  of  imperfect  intellects  (under  yhich 
mine  must  be  content  to  rank),  which  in  its  constitution  is  es- 
sentially anti-Caledonian.  The  owners  of  the  sort  of  faculties  I 
allude  to,  have  minds  rather  suggestive  than  comprehensive. 
They  have  no  pretences  to  much  clearness  or  precision  in  their 
ideas,  or  in  their  manner  of  expressing  them.  Their  intellectual 
wardrobe  (to  confess  fairly)  has  few  whole  pieces  in  it.  They 
are  content  with  fragments  and  scattered  pieces  of  Truth.  She 
presents  no  full  front  to  them — a  feature  or  side-face  at  the  most. 
Hints  and  glimpses,  germs  and  crude  essays  at  a  system,  is  the 
utmost  they  pretend  to.     They  beat  up  a  little  game  peradven- 

*  I  would  be  understood  as  confining  myself  to  the  subject  of  imperfect 
sympathies.  To  nations  or  classes  of  men  there  can  be  no  direct  antipathy. 
There  may  be  indiriduals  born  and  constellated  so  opposite  to  another  in- 
dividual nature,  that  the  same  sphere  cannot  hold  them.  I  have  met  with 
my  moral  antipodes,  and  can  believe  the  story  of  two  persons  meeting 
(who  never  saw  one  another  before  in  their  lives)  and  instantly  fighting. 

We  by  proof  find  there  should  be 


*Twixt  man  and  man  such  an  antipathy, 
That  though  he  can  show  no  just  reason  why 
For  any  former  wrong  or  injury, 
Can  neither  find  a  blemish  in  his  fame, 
Nor  aught  in  face  or  feature  justly  blame. 
Can  challenge  or  accuse  him  of  no  evil. 
Yet  notwithstanding  hates  him  as  a  devil. 

The  lines  are  from  old  Heywood's  "  Hierarchic  of  Angels,"  and  he  sub- 
joins a  curious  story  in  confirmation,  of  a  Spaniard  who  attempted  to 
assassinate  a  King  Ferdinand  of  Spain,  and  being  put  to  the  rack  could 
give  no  other  reason  for  the  deed  but  an  inveterate  antipathy  which  he  had 
taken  to  the  first  sight  of  the  King. 


The  cause  which  to  that  act  compell'd  him 

Was,  he  ne'er  loved  him  since  he  first  beheld  him. 


IMPERFECT  SYMPATHIES.  73 

ture — and  leave  it  to  knottier  heads,  more  robust  constitutions,  to 
run  it  down.  The  light  that  lights  them  is  not  steady  and  polar, 
but  mutable  and  shifting :  waxing,  and  again  waning.  Their 
conversation  is  accordingly.  They  will  throw  out  a  random 
word  in  or  out  of  season,  and  be  content  to  let  it  pass  for  what  it 
is  worth.  They  cannot  speak  always  as  if  they  were  upon  their 
oath — but  must  be  understood,  speaking  or  writing,  with  some 
abatement.  They  seldom  wait  to  mature  a  proposition,  but  e'en 
bring  it  to  market  in  the  green  ear.  They  delight  to  impart  their 
defective  discoveries  as  they  arise,  without  waiting  for  their  full 
development.  They  are  no  systematizers,  and  would  but  err  more 
by  attempting  it.  Their  minds,  as  I  said  before,  are  suggestive 
merely.  The  brain  of  a  true  Caledonian  (if  I  am  not  mistaken) 
is  constituted  upon  quite  a  different  plan.  His  Minerva  is  born 
in  panoply.  You  are  never  admitted  to  see  his  ideas  in  their 
growth — if,  indeed,  they  do  grow,  and  are  not  rather  put  together 
upon  principles  of  clock-work.  You  never  catch  his  mind  in  an 
undress.  He  never  hints  or  suggests  anything,  but  unlades  his 
stock  of  ideas  in  perfect  order  and  completeness.  He  brings  his 
total  wealth  into  company,  and  gravely  unpacks  it.  His  riches 
are  always  about  him.  He  never  stoops  to  catch  a  glittering 
something  in  your  presence  to  share  it  with  you,  before  he  quite 
knows  whether  it  be  true  touch  or  not.  You  cannot  cry  halves 
to  anything  that  he  finds.  He  does  not  find,  but  bring.  You 
never  witness  his  first  apprehension  of  a  thing.  His  understand- 
ing is  always  at  its  meridian — you  never  see  the  first  dawn,  the 
early  streaks. — He  has  no  falterings  of  self-suspicion.  Surmises, 
guesses,  misgivings,  half-intuitions,  semi-consciousnesses,  partial 
illuminations,  dim  instincts,  embryo  conceptions,  have  no  place  in 
his  brain,  or  vocabulary.  The  twilight  of  dubiety  never  falls 
upon  him.  Is  he  orthodox — he  has  no  doubts.  Is  he  an  infidel 
— he  has  none  either.  Between  the  affirmative  and  the  negative 
there  is  no  border-land  with  him.  You  cannot  hover  with  him 
upon  the  Confines  of  truth,  or  wander  in  the  maze  of  a  probable 
argument.  He  always  keeps  the  path.  You  cannot  make  ex- 
cursions with  him — for  he  sets  you  right.  His  taste  never  fluc- 
tuates. His  morality  never  abates.  He  cannot  compromise,  or 
understand  middle  actions.     There  can  be  but  a  right  and  a 


74  ELIA. 

wrong.  His  conversation  is  as  a  book.  His  affirmations  have 
the  sanctity  of  an  oath.  You  must  speak  upon  the  square  with 
him.  He  stops  a  metaphor  like  a  suspected  person  in  an  enemy's 
country.  "  A  healthy  book !" — said  one  of  his  countrymen  to 
me,  who  had  ventured  to  give  that  appellation  to  John  Buncle, 
— "  Did  I  catch  rightly  what  you  said  ?  I  have  heard  of  a  man 
in  health,  and  of  a  healthy  state  of  body,  but  I  do  not  see  how 
that  epithet  can  be  properly  applied  to  a  book."  Above  all,  you 
must  beware  of  indirect  expressions  before  a  Caledonian.  Clap 
an  extinguisher  upon  your  irony,  if  you  are  unhappily  blest  with 
a  vein  of  it.  Remember  you  are  upon  your  oath.  I  have  a 
print  of  a  graceful  female  after  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  which  I  was 
showing  off  to  Mr.  ****.  After  he  had  examined  it  minutely,  I 
ventured  to  ask  him  how  he  liked  my  beauty  (a  foolish  name  it 
goes  by  among  my  friends) — when  he  very  gravely  assured  me 
that  "  he  had  considerable  respect  for  my  character  and  talents" 
(so  he  was  pleased  to  say),  "  but  had  not  given  himself  much 
thought  about  the  degree  of  my  personal  pretensions."  The  mis- 
conception staggered  me,  but  did  not  seem  much  to  disconcert 
him. — Persons  of  this  nation  are  particularly  fond  of  affirming  a 
truth — which  nobody  doubts.  They  do  not  so  properly  affirm, 
as  annunciate  it.  They  do  indeed  appear  to  have  such  a  love 
of  truth  (as  if,  like  virtue,  it  were  valuable  for  itself)  that  all 
truth  becomes  equally  valuable,  whether  the  proposition  that  con- 
tains it  be  new  or  old,  disputed,  or  such  as  is  impossible  to  be- 
come a  subject  of  disputation.  I  was  present  not  long  since  at  a 
party  of  North  Britons,  where  a  son  of  Burns  was  expected ; 
and  happened  to  drop  a  silly  expression  (in  my  South  British 
way),  that  I  wished  it  were  the  father  instead  of  the  son — when 
four  of  them  started  up  at  once  to  inform  me,  that  "  that  was  im- 
possible, because  he  was  dead."  An  impracticable  wish,  it 
seems,  was  more  than  they  could  conceive.  Swift  has  hit  off  this 
part  of  their  character,  namely,  their  love  of  truth,  in  his  biting 
way,  but  with  an  illiberality  that  necessarily  confines  the  passage 
to  the  margin.*     The  tediousness  of  these  people  is  certainly  pro- 

*  There  are  some  people  who  think  they  sufficiently  acquit  themselves, 
and  entertain  their  company,  with  relating  facts  of  no  consequence,  not  at 
all  out  of  the  road  of  such  common  incidents  as  happen  every  day :  and 


IMPERFECT  SYMPATHIES.  75 

yoking.  I  wonder  if  they  ever  tire  one  another  ? — In  my  early 
life  I  had  a  passionate  fondness  for  the  poetry  of  Burns.  I  have 
sometimes  foolishly  hoped  to  ingratiate  myself  with  his  country^ 
men  by  expressing  it.  But  I  have  always  found  that  a  true  Scot 
resents  your  admiration  of  his  compatriot,  even  more  than  he 
would  your  contempt  of  him.  The  latter  he  imputes  to  your 
"  imperfect  acquaintance  with  many  of  the  words  which  he  uses ;" 
and  the  same  objection  makes  it  a  presumption  in  you  to  suppose 
that  you  can  admire  him. — Thompson  they  seem  to  have  forgot- 
ten. Smollett  they  have  neither  forgotten  nor  forgiven,  for  his 
delineation  of  Rory  and  his  companion,  upon  their  first  introduc- 
tion to  our  metropolis. — Speak  of  Smollett  as  a  great  genius,  and 
Ihey  will  retort  upon  you  Hume's  History  compared  with  his 
Continuation  of  it.  What  if  the  historian  had  cojatinued  Hum- 
phrey Clinker  ? 

I  have,  in  the  abstract,  no  disrespect  for  Jews.  They  are  a 
piece  of  stubborn  antiquity,  compared  with  which  Stonehenge  is 
in  its  nonage.  They  date  beyond  the  pyramids.  But  I  should  not 
care  to  be  in  habits  of  familiar  intercourse  with  any  of  that  nation. 
I  confess  that  I  have  not  the  nerves  to  enter  their  synagogues. 
Old  prejudices  cling  about  me.  I  cannot  shake  off  the  story  of 
Hugh  of  Lincoln.  Centuries  of  injury,  contempt,  and  hate,  on  the 
one  side, — of  cloaked  revenge,  dissimulation,  and  hate,  on  the 
other,  between  our  and  their  fathers,  must  and  ought,  to  affect  the 
blood  of  the  children.  I  cannot  believe  it  can  run  clear  and 
kindly  yet ;  or  that  a  few  fine  words,  such  as  candor,  liberality, 
the  light  of  a  nineteenth  century,  can  close  up  the  breaches  of  so 
deadly  a  disunion.  A  Hebrew  is  nowhere  congenial  to  me.  He 
is  least  distasteful  on  'Change — for  the  mercantile  spirit  levels  all 
distinctions,  as  all  are  beauties  in  the  dark.  I  boldly  confess 
that  I  do  not  relish  the  approximation  of  Jew  and  Christian,  which 
has  become  so  fashionable.     The  reciprocal  endearments  have,  to 

this  I  have  observed  more  frequently  among  the  Scots  than  any  other  na- 
tion, who  are  very  careful  not  to  omit  the  minutest  circumstances  of  time 
or  place  ;  which  kind  of  discourse,  if  it  were  not  a  little  relieved  by  the 
uncouth  terms  and  phrases,  aa  well  as  accent  and  gesture  peculiar  to  that 
country,  would  be  hardly  tolerable. — Hints  towards  an  Essay  on  Conver- 
sation. 


76  ELIA. 

me,  something  hypocritical  and  unnatural  in  them.  I  do  not  like 
to  see  the  Church  and  Synagogue  kissing  and  congeeing  in 
awkward  postures  of  an  affected  civility.  If  they  are  converted, 
why  do  they  not  come  over  to  us  altogether  ?  Why  keep  up  a 
form  of  separation,  when  the  life  of  it  is  fled  1  If  they  can  sit 
with  us  at  table,  why  do  they  keck  at  our  cookery  ?  I  do  not 
understand  these  half  convertites.  Jews  christianizing — Christians 
judeiizing — puzzle  me.  I  like  fish  or  flesh.  A  moderate  Jew  is  a 
more  confounding  piece  of  anomaly  than  a  wet  Quaker.   The  spirit 

of  the  synagogue  is  essentially  separative.  B would  have  been 

more  in  keeping  if  he  had  abided  by  the  faith  of  his  forefathers. 

There  is  a  fine  scorn  in  his  face,  which  nature  meant  to  be  of 

Christians.  The  Hebrew  spirit  is  strong  in  him,  in  spite  of  his 
proselytism.  He  cannot  conquer  the  Shibboleth.  How  it  breaks 
out,  when  he  sings,  "  The  Children  of  Tsrael  passed  through  the 
Red  Sea  !"  The  auditors,  for  the  moment,  are  as  Egyptians  to 
him,  and  he  rides  over  our  necks  in  triumph.  There  is  no  mis- 
taking him.  B has  a  strong  expression  of  sense  in  his  coun- 
tenance, and  it  is  confirmed  by  his  singing.  The  foundation  of 
his  vocal  excellence  is  sense.  He  sings  with  understanding,  as 
Kemble  delivered  dialogue.  He  would  sing  the  Commandments, 
and  give  an  appropriate  character  to  each  prohibition.  His 
nation,  in  general,  have  not  over-sensible  countenances.  How 
should  they  ? — but  you  seldom  see  a  silly  expression  among  them 
Gain,  and  the  pursuit  of  gain,  sharpen  a  man's  visage.  I  never 
heard  of  an  idiot  being  born  among  them. — Some  admire  the 
Jewish  female-physiognomy.  I  admire  it — but  with  trembling. 
Jael  had  those  full  dark  inscrutable  eyes. 

In  the  Negro  countenance  you  will  often  meet  with  strong 
traits  of  benignity.  I  have  felt  yearnings  of  tenderness  towards 
some  of  these  faces — or  rather  masks — that  have  looked  out 
kindly  upon  one-'in  casual  encounters  in  the  streets  and  highways. 
I  love  what  Fuller  beautifully  calls — these  "  images  of  God  cut 
in  ebony."  But  I  should  not  like  to  associate  with  them,  to  share 
my  meals  and  my  good-nights  with  them — because  they  are 
black. 

I  love  Quaker  ways,  and  Quaker  worship.  I  venerate  the 
Quaker  principles.     It  does  me  good  for  the  rest  of  the  day  when 


IMPERFECT  SYMPATHIES.  77 

I  meet  any  of  their  people  in  my  path.  When  I  am  ruffled  or 
disturbed  by  any  occurrence,  the  sight,  or  quiet  voice  of  a 
Quaker,  acts  upon  me  as  a  ventilator,  lightening  the  air,  and 
taking  off  a  load  from  the  bosom.  But  I  cannot  like  the  Quakers 
(as  Desdemona  would  say)  "to  live  with  them."  I  am  all  over 
sophisticated — with  humors,  fancies,  craving  hourly  sympathy. 
I  must  have  books,  pictures,  theatres,  chit-chat,  scandal,  jokes, 
ambiguities,  and  a  thousand  whim-whams,  which  their  simpler 
taste  can  do  without.  I  should  starve  at  their  primitive  banquet. 
My  appetites  are  too  high  for  the  salads  which  (according  to 
Evelyn)  Eve  dressed  for  the  angel,  my  gusto  too  excited 

To  sit  a  guest  with  Daniel  at  his  pulse. 

The  indirect  answers  which  Quakers  are  often  found  to  return 
to  a  question  put  to  them  may  be  explained,  I  think,  without  the 
vulgar  assumption,  that  they  are  more  given  to  evasion  and  equi- 
vocating than  other  people.  They  naturally  look  to  their  words 
more  carefully,  and  are  more  cautious  of  committing  themselves. 
They  have  a  peculiar  character  to  keep  up  on  this  head.  They 
stand  in  a  manner  upon  their  veracity.  A  Quaker  is  by  law 
exempted  from  taking  an  oath.  The  custom  of  resorting  to  an 
oath  in  extreme  cases,  sanctified  as  it  is  by  all  religious  antiquity, 
is  apt  (it  must  be  confessed)  to  introduce  into  the  laxer  sort  of 
minds  the  notion  of  two  kinds  of  truth — the  one  applicable  to  the 
solemn  affairs  of  justice,  and  the  other  to  the  common  proceed- 
ings of  daily  intercourse.  As  truth  bound  upon  the  conscience 
by  an  oath  can  be  but  truth,  so  in  the  common  affirmations  of  the 
shop  and  the  market-place  a  latitude  is  expected,  and  conceded 
upon  questions  wanting  this  solemn  covenant.  Something  less 
than  truth  satisfies.  It  is  common  to  hear  a  person  say,  "  You  do 
not  expect  me  to  speak  as  if  I  were  upon  my  oath."  Hence  a 
great  deal  of  incorrectness  and  inadvertency,  short  of  falsehood, 
creeps  into  ordinary  conversation ;  and  a  kind  of  secondary  or 
laic-truth  is  tolerated,  where  clergy-truth — oath-truth,  by  the 
nature  of  the  circumstances,  is  not  required.  A  Quaker  knows 
none  of  this  distinction.  His  simple  affirmation  being  received, 
upon  the  most  sacred  occasions,  without  any  further  test,  stamps 
a  value  upon  the  words  which  he  is  to  use  upon  the  most  indiffer- 


78  ELIA. 

ent  topics  of  life.  He  looks  to  them,  naturally,  with  more 
severity.  You  can  have  of  him  no  more  than  his  word.  He 
knows,  if  he  is  caught  tripping  in  a  casual  expression,  he  forfeits, 
for  himself  at  least,  his  claim  to  the  invidious  exemption.  He 
knows  that  his  syllables  are  weighed — and  how  far  a  conscious- 
ness of  this  particular  watchfulness,  exerted  against  a  person,  has 
a  tendency  to  produce  indirect  answers,  and  a  diverting  of  the 
question  by  honest  means,  might  be  illustrated,  and  the  practice 
justified,  by  a  more  sacred  example  than  is  proper  to  be  adduced 
upon  this  occasion.  The  admirable  presence  of  mind,  which  is 
notorious  in  Quakers  upon  all  contingencies,  might  be  traced  to 
this  imposed  self- watchfulness — if  it  did  not  seem  rather  an  hum- 
ble and  secular  scion  of  that  old  stock  of  religious  constancy, 
which  never  bent  or  faltered,  in  the  Primitive  Friends,  or  gave 
way  to  the  winds  of  persecution,  to  the  violence  of  judge  or  ac- 
cuser, under  trials  and  racking  examinations.  "  You  will  never 
be  the  wiser,  if  1  sit  here  answering  your  questions  till  midnight," 
said  one  of  those  upright  Justicers  to  Penn,  who  had  been  putting 
law-cases  with  a  puzzling  subtlety.  "  Thereafter  as  the  answers 
may  be,"  retorted  the  Quaker.  The  astonishing  composure  of 
this  people  is  sometimes  ludicrously  displayed  in  lighter  instan- 
ces.— I  was  travelling  in  a  stage-coach  with  three  male  Quakers, 
buttoned  up  in  the  straitest  non-conformity  of  their  sect.  We 
stopped  to  bait  at  Andover,  where  a  meal,  partly  tea  apparatus, 
partly  supper,  was  set  before  us.  My  friends  confined  themselves 
to  the  tea-table.  I  in  my  way  took  supper.  When  the  landlady 
brought  in  the  bill,  the  eldest  of  my  companions  discovered  that 
she  had  charged  for  both  meals.  This  was  resisted.  Mine  hos- 
tess was  very  clamorous  and  positive.  Some  mild  arguments 
were  used  on  the  part  of  the  Quakers,  for  which  the  heated  mind 
of  the  good  lady  seemed  by  no  means  a  fit  recipient.  The  guard 
came  in  with  his  usual  peremptory  notice.  The  Quakers  pulled 
out  their  money  and  formally  tendered  it — so  much  for  tea — I,  in 
humble  imitation,  tendering  mine — for  the  supper  which  I  had 
taken.  She  would  not  relax  in  her  demand.  So  they  all  three 
quietly  put  up  their  silver,  as  did  myself,  and  marched  out  of  the 
room,  the  eldest  and  gravest  going  first,  with  myself  closing  up 
the  rear,  who  thought  I  could  not  do  better  than  follow  the  exam- 


IMPERFECT  SYMPATHIES.  79 

pie  of  such  grave  and  warrantable  personages.  We  got  in. 
The  steps  went  up.  The  coach  drove  off.  The  murmurs  of  mine 
hostess,  not  very  indistinctly  or  ambiguously  pronounced,  became 
after  a  time  inaudible — and  now  my  conscience,  which  the  whim- 
sical scene  had  for  a  while  suspended,  beginning  to  give  some 
twitches,  I  waited,  in  the  hope  that  some  justification  would  be 
offered  by  these  serious  persons  for  the  seeming  injustice  of  their 
conduct.  To  my  great  surprise,  not  a  syllable  was  dropped  on 
the  subject.  They  sate  as  mute  as  at  a  meeting.  At  length  the 
eldest  of  them  broke  silence,  in  inquiring  of  his  next  neighbor, 
"  Hast  thou  heard  how  indigos  go  at  the  Indian  House  V  and  the 
question  operated  as  a  soporific  on  my  moral  feeling  as  far  as 
Exeter. 


8C  ELIA. 


WITCHES,  AND  OTHER  NIGHT  FEARS 


We  are  too  hasty  when  we  set  down  our  ancestors  in  the  gross 
for  fools,  for  the  monstrous  inconsistencies  (as  they  seem  to  us) 
involved  in  their  creed  of  witchcraft.  In  the  relations  of  this 
visible  world  we  find  them  to  have  been  as  rational,  and  shrewd 
to  detect  an  historic  anomaly,  as  ourselves.  But  when  once  the 
invisible  world  was  supposed  to  be  opened,  and  the  lawless  agency 
of  bad  spirits  assumed,  what  measures  of  probability,  of  decency, 
of  fitness,  or  proportion — of  that  which  distinguishes  the  likely 
from  the  palpable  absurd — could  they  have  to  guide  them  in  the 
rejection  or  admission  of  any  particular  testimony  ? — That  maid- 
ens pined  away,  wasting  inwardly  as  their  waxen  images  con- 
sumed before  a  fire — that  corn  was  lodged,  and  cattle  lamed — 
that  whirlwinds  uptore  in  diabolic  revelry  the  oaks  of  the  forest 
— or  that  spits  and  kettles  only  danced  a  fearful-innocent  vagary 
about  some  rustic's  kitchen,  when  no  wind  was  stirring — were  all 
equally  probable  where  no  law  of  agency  was  understood.  That 
the  prince  of  the  powers  of  darkness,  passing  by  the  flower  and 
pomp  of  the  earth,  should  lay  preposterous  siege  to  the  weak  fan- 
tasy of  indigent  eld — has  neither  likelihood  nor  unlikelihood  a 
priori  to  us,  who  have  no  measure  to  guess  at  his  policy,  or  stand- 
ard to  estimate  what  rate  those  anile  souls  may  fetch  in  the  devil's 
market.  Nor,  when  the  wicked  are  expressly  symbolised  by  a 
goat,  was  it  to  be  wondered  at  so  much,  that  he  should  come  some- 
times in  that  body,  and  assert  his  metaphor. — That  the  intercourse 
was  opened  at  all  between  both  worlds,  was  perhaps  the  mistake 
— but  that  once  assumed,  I  see  no  reason  for  disbelieving  one 
attested  story  of  this  nature  more  than  another  on  the  score  of  ab- 
surdity. There  is  no  law  to  judge  of  the  lawless,  or  canon  by 
which  a  dream  may  be  criticised. 


WITCHES,  AND  OTHER  NIGHT  FEARS.  81 

I  have  sometimes  thought  that  I  could  not  have  existed  in  the 
days  of  received  witchcraft ;  that  I  could  not  have  slept  in  a  vil- 
lage where  one  of  those  reputed  hags  dwelt.  Our  ancestors 
were  bolder  or  more  obtuse.  Amidst  the  universal  belief  that 
these  wretches  were  in  league  with  the  author  of  all  evil,  holding 
hell  tributary  to  their  muttering,  no  simple  Justice  of  the  Peace 
seems  to  have  scrupled  issuing,  or  silly  Headborough  serving  a 
warrant  upon  them — as  if  they  should  subpoena  Satan  ! — Prosper© 
in  his  boat,  with  his  books  and  wand  about  him,  suffers  himself 
to  be  conveyed  away  at  the  mercy  of  his  enemies  to  an  unknown 
island.  He  might  have  raised  a  storm  or  two,  we  think,  on  the 
passage.  His  acquiescence  is  in  exact  analogy  to  the  non-resist- 
ance of  witches  to  the  constituted  powers. — What  stops  the  Fiend 
in  Spenser  from  tearing  Guyon  to  pieces— or  who  had  made  it  a 
condition  of  his  prey,  that  Guyon  must  take  assay  of  the  glorious 
bait — ^we  have  no  guess.  We  do  not  know  the  laws  of  that  coun- 
try. 

From  my  childhood  I  was  extremely  inquisitive  about  witches 
and  witch-stories.  My  maid,  and  more  legendary  aunt,  supplied 
me  with  good  store.  But  I  shall  mention  the  accident  which  di- 
rected my  curiosity  originally  into  this  channel.  In  my  father's 
book-closet,  the  History  of  the  Bible  by  Stackhouse  occupied  a 
distinguished  station.  The  pictures  with  which  it  abounds — one 
of  the  ark,  in  particular,  and  another  of  Solomon's  temple,  deline- 
ated with  all  the  fidelity  of  ocular  admeasurement,  as  if  the  artist 
had  been  upon  the  spot — attracted  my  childish  attention.  There 
was  a  picture,  too,  of  the  Witch  raising  up  Samuel,  which  I  wish 
that  I  had  never  seen.  We  shall  come  to  that  hereafter.  Stack- 
house  is  in  two  huge  tomes — and  there  was  a  pleasure  in  remov- 
ing folios  of  that  magnitude,  which,  with  infinite  straining,  was  as 
much  as  I  could  manage,  from  the  situation  which  they  occupied 
upon  an  upper  shelf.  I  have  not  met  with  the  work  from  that 
time  to  this,  but  I  remember  it  consisted  of  Old  Testament  stories, 
orderly  set  down,  with  the  objection  appended  to  each  story,  and 
the  solution  of  the  objection  regularly  tacked  to  that.  The  ohjec- 
Hon  was  a  summary  of  whatever  difficulties  had  been  opposed  to 
the  credibility  of  the  history,  by  the  shrewdness  of  ancient  or 
modern  infidelity,  drawn  up  with  an  almost  complunentary  excess 

PAET  I.  7 


82  ELIA. 

of  candor.  The  solution  was  brief,  modest  and  satisfactory.  The 
bane  and  antidote  were  both  before  you.  To  doubts  so  put,  and 
so  quashed,  there  seemed  to  be  an  end  for  ever.  The  dragon  lay 
dead,  for  the  foot  of  the  veriest  babe  to  trample  on.  But — like 
as  was  rather  feared  than  realized  from  that  slain  monster  in 
Spenser — from  the  womb  of  those  crushed  errors  young  dragonets 
would  creep,  exceeding  the  prowess  of  so  tender  a  Saint  George 
as  myself  to  vanquish.  The  habit  of  expecting  objections  to  every 
passage,  set  me  upon  starting  more  objections,  for  the  glory  of 
finding  a  solution  of  my  own  for  them.  I  became  staggered  and 
perplexed,  a  sceptic  in  long-coats.  The  pretty  Bible  stories 
which  I  had  read,  or  heard  read  in  church,  lost  their  purity  and 
sincerity  of  impression,  and  were  turned  into  so  many  historic  or 
chronologic  theses  to  be  defended  against  whatever  impugners. 
I  was  not  to  disbelieve  them,  but — the  next  thing  to  that — I  was 
to  be  quite  sure  that  some  one  or  other  would  or  had  disbelieved 
them.  Next  to  making  a  child  an  infidel,  is  the  letting  him  know 
that  there  are  infidels  at  all.  Credulity  is  the  man's  weakness, 
but  the  child's  strength.  O,  how  ugly  sound  scriptural  doubts 
from  the  mouth  of  a  babe  and  a  suckling  ! — I  should  have  lost 
myself  in  these  mazes,  and  have  pined  away,  I  think,  with  such 
unfit  sustenance  as  these  husks  afforded,  but  for  a  fortunate  piece 
of  ill-fortune,  which  about  this  time  bt  fel  me.  Turning  over  the 
picture  of  the  ark  with  too  much  haste,  I  unhappily  made  a 
breach  in  its  ingenious  fabric — driving  my  inconsiderate  finger 
right  through  the  two  large  quadrupeds — the  elephant,  and  the 
camel — that  stare  (as  well  they  might)  out  of  the  two  last  windows 
next  the  steerage  in  that  unique  piece  of  naval  architecture.  Stack- 
house  was  henceforth  locked  up,  and  became  an  interdicted  trea- 
sure. With  the  book,  the  objections  and  solutions  gradually  clear- 
ed out  of  my  head,  and  have  seldom  returned  since  in  any  force 
to  trouble  me. — But  there  was  one  impression  which  I  had  im- 
bibed from  Stackhouse,  which  no  lock  or  bar  could  shut  out,  and 
which  was  destined  to  try  my  childish  nerves  rather  more  seri- 
ously.— That  detestable  picture  ! 

I  was  dreadfully  alive  to  nervous  terrors.  The  night-time, 
solitude,  and  the  dark,  were  my  hell.  The  sufferings  I  endured 
in  this  nature  would  justify  the  expression.     I  never  laid  my 


WITCHES,  AND  OTHER  NIGHT  FEARS.  83 

head  on  my  pillow,  I  suppose,  from  the  fourth  to  the  seventh  or 
eighth  year  of  my  life — so  far  as  memory  serves  in  things  so  long 
ago— without  an  assurance,  which  realized  its  own  prophecy,  of 
seeing  some  frightful  spectre.  Be  old  Stackhouse  then  acquitted 
in  part,  if  I  say,  that  to  his  picture  of  the  Witch  raising  up  Sam- 
uel— (O  that  old  man  covered  with  a  mantle !) — I  owe — not  my 
midnight  terrors,  the  hell  of  my  infancy — but  the  shape  and 
manner  of  their  visitations.  It  was  he  who  dressed  up  for  me  a 
hag  that  nightly  sate  upon  my  pillow — a  sure  bedfellow,  when 
my  aunt  or  my  maid  was  far  from  me.  All  day  long,  while  the 
book  was  permitted  me,  I  dreamed  waking  over  his  delineation, 
and  at  night  (if  I  may  use  so  bold  an  expression)  awoke  into 
sleep,  and  found  the  vision  true.  I  durst  not,  even  in  the  day- 
light, once  enter  the  chamber  where  I  slept,  without  my  face 
turned  to  the  window,  aversely  from  the  bed  where  my  witch- 
ridden  pillow  was. — Parents  do  not  know  what  they  do  when  they 
leave  tender  babes  alone  to  go  to  sleep  in  the  dark.  The  feeling 
about  for  a  friendly  arm — ^the  hoping  for  a  familiar  voice — when 
they  wake  screaming — and  find  none  to  soothe  themT—what  a  ter- 
rible shaking  it  is  to  their  poor  nerves  !  The  keeping  them  up 
till  midnight,  through  candle-light  and  the  unwholesome  hours,  as 
they  are  called, — would,  I  am  satisfied,  in  a  medical  point  of 
view,  prove  the  better  caution.  That  detestable  picture,  as  I 
have  said,  gave  the  fashion  to  my  dreams — if  dreams  they  were 
— for  the  scene  of  them  was  invariably  the  room  in  which  I  lay. 
Had  I  never  met  with  the  picture,  the  fears  would  have  come 
self-pictured  in  some  shape  or  other — 

Headless  bear,  black  man,  or  ape — 

but,  as  it  was,  my  imaginations  took  that  form. — It  is  not  book,  or 
picture,  or  the  stories  of  foolish  servants,  which  create  these  ter- 
rors in  children.  They  can  at  most  but  give  them  a  direction. 
Dear  little  T.  H.,  who  of  all  children  has  been  brought  up  with 
the  most  scrupulous  exclusion  of  every  taint  of  superstition — who 
was  never  allowed  to  hear  of  goblin  or  apparition,  or  scarcely  to 
be  told  of  bad  men,  or  to  read  or  hear  of  any  distressing  story-— 
finds  all  this  world  of  fear,  from  which  he  has  been  so  rigidly 


84  ELIA. 

excluded  ab  extra,  in  his  own  "  thick-coming  fancies  ;"  and  from 
his  little  midnight  pillow,  this  nurse-child  of  optimism  will  start  at 
shapes,  unborrowed  of  tradition,  in  sweats  to  which  the  reveries 
of  the  cell-damned  murderer  are  tranquillity. 

Gorgons,  and  Hydras,  and  Chimseras  dire — stories  of  Celssno 
and  the  Harpies — may  reproduce  themselves  in  the  brain  of 
superstition — but  they  were  there  before.  They  are  transcripts, 
types — the  archetypes  are  in  us,  and  eternal.  How  else  should 
the  recital  of  that,  which  we  know  in  a  waking  sense  to  be  false, 
come  to  affect  us  at  all  ?- 


Names,  whose  sense  we  see  not. 

Fray  us  with  things  that  be  not  ? 

Is  it  that  we  naturally  conceive  terror  from  such  objects,  con- 
sidered in  their  capacity  of  being  able  to  inflict  upon  us  bodily 
injury  ? — O,  least  of  all !  These  terrors  are  of  older  standing. 
They  date  beyond  body—or,  without  the  body,  they  would  have 
been  the  same.  All  the  cruel,  tormenting,  defined  devils  in 
Dante — tearing,  mangling,  choking,  stifling,  scorching  demons — 
are  they  one-half  so  fearful  to  the  spirit  of  a  man,  as  the  simple  j^-^ 
idea  of  a  spirit  unembodied  following  him — 

Like  one  that  on  a  lonesome  road 
Doth  walk  in  fear  and  dread. 
And  having  once  turn'd  round,  walks  on 
And  turns  no  more  his  head ; 
Because  he  knows  a  frightful  fiend 
Doth  close  behind  him  tread.* 

That  the  kind  of  fear  here  treated  of  is  purely  spiritual — ^that  it 
is  strong  in  proportion  as  it  is  objectless  upon  earth — that  it  pre- 
dominates in  the  period  of  sinless  infancy — are  difficulties,  the 
solution  of  which  might  afford  some  probable  insight  into  our 
ante-mundane  condition,  and  a  peep  at  least  into  the  shadow-land 
of  pre-existence. 

My  night-fancies  have  long  ceased  to  be  afflictive.  I  confess 
an  occasional  night-mare ;  but  I  do  not,  as  in  early  youth,  keep  a 
stud  of  them.     Fiendish  faces,  with  the  extinguished  taper,  will 

*  Mr.  Coleridge's  Ancient  Mariner. 


WITCHES,  AND  OTHER  NIGHT  FEARS.  85 

come  and  look  at  me ;  but  I  know  them  for  mockeries,  even  while 
I  cannot  elude  their  presence,  and  I  fight  and  grapple  with  them. 
For  the  credit  of  my  imagination,  I  am  almost  ashamed  to  say 
how  tame  and  prosaic  my  dreams  are  grown.  They  are  never 
romantic,  seldom  even  rural.  They  are  of  architecture  and  of 
buildings — cities  abroad,  which  I  have  never  seen,  and  hardly 
have  hope  to  see.  I  have  traversed,  for  the  seeming  length  of  a 
natural  day,  Rome,  Amsterdam,  Paris,  Lisbon — their  churches, 
palaces,  squares,  market-places,  shops,  suburbs,  ruins,  with  an 
inexpressible  sense  of  delight, — a  map-like  distinctness  of  trace — 
and  a  day-light  vividness  of  vision,  that  was  all  but  being  awake. — 
I  have  formerly  travelled  among  the  Westmoreland  fells — my 
highest  Alps, — but  they  are  objects  too  mighty  for  the  grasp  of  my 
dreaming  recognition  ;  and  I  have  again  and  again  awoke  with 
ineffectual  struggles  of  the  inner  eye,  to  make  out  a  shape  in  any 
way  whatever,  of  Helvellyn.  Methought  I  was  in  that  country, 
but  the  mountains  were  gone.  The  poverty  of  my  dreams  mor- 
tifies me.  There  is  Coleridge,  at  his  will,  can  conjure  up  icy 
domes,  and  pleasure-houses  for  Kubla-Khan,  and  Abyssinian 
maids,  and  songs  of  Abora,  and  caverns. 

Where  Alph,  the  sacred  river,  runs, 

to  solace  his  night  solitudes — when  I  cannot  muster  a  fiddle. 
Barry  Cornwall  has  his  tritons  and  his  nereids  gamboling  before 
him  in  nocturnal  visions,  and  proclaiming  sons  born  to  Neptune— 
when  my  stretch  of  imaginative  activity  can  hardly,  in  the  night 
season,  raise  up  the  ghost  of  a  fish-wife.  To  set  my  failures  in 
somewhat  a  mortifying  light — it  was  after  reading  the  noble 
Dream  of  this  poet,  that  my  fancy  ran  strong  upon  these  marine 
spectra ;  and 'the  poor  plastic  power,  such  as  it  is,  within  me  set  to 
work,  to  humor  my  folly  in  a  sort  of  dream  that  very  night. 
Methought  I  was  upon  the  ocean  billows  at  some  sea  nuptials, 
riding  and  mounted  high,  with  the  customary  train  sounding  their 
conches  before  me  (I  myself,  you  may  be  sure,  the  leading  god), 
aiid  jollily  we  went  careering  over  the  main,  till  just  where  Ino 
Leucothea  should  have  greeted  me  (I  think  it  was  Ino)  with  a 
white  embrace,  the  billows  gradually  subsiding,  fell  from  a  sea- 
roughness  to  a  sea-calm,  and  thence  to  a  river  motion,  and  that 


86  ELIA. 

river  (as  happens  in  the  familiarisation  of  dreams)  was  no  other 
than  the  gentle  Thames,  which  landed  me  in  the  wafture  of 
a  placid  wave  or  two,  alone,  safe  and  inglorious,  somewhere  at 
the  foot  of  Lambeth  palace. 

The  degree  of  the  soul's  creativeness  in  sleep  might  furnish  no 
whimsical  criterion  of  the  quantum  of  poetical  faculty  resident  in 
the  same  soul  waking.  An  old  gentleman,  a  friend  of  mine,  and 
a  humorist,  used  to  carry  this  notion  so  far,  that  when  he  saw 
any  stripling  of  his  acquaintance  ambitious  of  becoming  a  poet, 
his  first  question  would  be, — "  Young  man,  what  sort  of  dreams 
have  you  ?"  I  have  so  much  faith  in  my  old  friend's  theory,  that 
when  I  feel  that  idle  vein  returning  upon  me,  I  presently  subside 
into  my  proper  element  of  prose,  remembering  those  eluding 
nereids,  and  that  inauspicious  inland  landing. 


m. 


VALENTINE'S  DAY.  87 


VALENTINE'S   DAY. 


Hail  to  thy  returning  festival,  old  Bishop  Valentine !  Great  is 
thy  name  in  the  rubric,  thou  venerable  Arch-flamen  of  Hymen ! 
Immortal  Go-between ;  who  and  what  manner  of  person  art  thou  ? 
Art  thou  but  a  name,  typifying  the  restless  principle  which  im- 
pels poor  humans  to  seek  perfection  in  union  ?  or  wert  thou  indeed 
a  mortal  prelate,  with  thy  tippet  and  thy  rochet,  thy  apron  on,  and 
decent  lawn  sleeves  1  Mysterious  personage !  like  unto  thee, 
assuredly  there  is  no  other  mitred  father  in  the  calendar;  not 
Jerome,  nor  Ambrose,  nor  Cyril ;  nor  the  consigner  of  undipt 
infants  to  eternal  torments,  Austin,  whom  all  mothers  hate ;  nor 
he  who  hated  all  mothers,  Origen ;  nor  Bishop  Bull,  nor  Arch- 
bishop Parker,  nor  Whitgift.  Thou  comest  attended  with  thou- 
sands and  ten  thousands  of  little  Loves,  and  the  air  is 

Brushed  with  the  hiss  of  rustling  wings. 

Singing  Cupids  are  thy  choristers  and  thy  precentors ;  and  instead 
of  the  crosier,  the  mystical  arrow  is  borne  before  thee. 

In  other  words,  this  is  the  day  on  which  those  charming  little 
missives,  yclept  Valentines,  cross  and  intercross  each  other  at 
every  street  and  turning.  The  weary  and  all  for-spent  two-penny 
postman  sinks  beneath  a  load  of  delicate  embarrassments,  not  his 
own.  It  is  scarcely  credible  to  what  an  extent  this  ephemeral 
courtship  is  carried  on  in  this  loving  town,  to  the  great  enrichment 
of  porters,  and  detriment  of  knockers  and  bell-wires.  In  these 
little  visual  interpretations,  no  emblem  is  so  common  as  the  hearty 
— ^that  little  three-cornered  exponent  of  all  our  hopes  and  fears, — 
the  bestuck  and  bleeding  heart ;  it  is  twisted  and  tortured  into 


ELI  A.    - 


more  allegories  and  affectations  than  an  opera  hat.  What 
authority  we  have  in  history  or  myythology  for  placing  the  head- 
quarters and  metropolis  of  God  Cupid  in  this  anatomical  seat 
rather  than  in  any  other,  is  not  very  clear ;  but  we  have  got  it, 
and  it  will  serve  as  well  as  any  other.  Else  we  might  easily 
imagine,  upon  some  other  system  which  might  have  prevailed  for 
anything  which  our  pathology  knows  to  the  contrary,  a  lover 
addressing  his  mistress,  in  perfect  simplicity  of  feeling,  "  Madam, 
my  liver  and  fortune  are  entirely  at  your  disposal ;"  or  putting  a 
delicate  question,  "  Amanda,  have  you  a  midriff  to  bestow  ?" 
But  custom  has  settled  these  things,  and  awarded  the  seat  of 
sentiment  to  the  aforesaid  triangle,  while  its  less  fortunate  neigh- 
bors wait  at  animal  and  anatomical  distance. 

Not  many  sounds  in  life,  and  I  include  all  urban  and  rural 
sounds,  exceed  in  interest  a  knock  at  the  door.  It  "  gives  a  very 
echo  to  the  throne  where  hope  is  seated."  But  its  issues  seldom 
answer  to  this  oracle  within.  It  is  so  seldom  that  just  the  person 
we  want  to  see  comes.  But  of  all  the  clamorous  visitations  the 
welcomest  in  expectation  is  the  sound  that  ushers  in,  or  seems  to 
usher  in  a  Valentine.  As  the  raven  himself  was  hoarse  that  an- 
nounced the  fatal  entrance  of  Duncan,  so  the  knock  of  the  post- 
man on  this  day  is  light,  airy,  confident,  and  befitting  one  that 
bringeth  good  tidings.  It  is  less  mechanical  than  on  other  days  ; 
you  will  say,  "  That  is  not  the  post  I  am  sure."  Visions  of  Love, 
of  Cupids,  of  Hymens! — delightful  eternal  common-places,  which 
"having  been  will  always  be ;"  which  no  school-boy  nor  school-" 
man  can  write  away ;  having  your  irreversible  throne  in  the 
fancy  and  affections — what  are  your  transports,  when  the  happy 
maiden,  opening  with  careful  finger,  careful  not  to  break  the 
emblematic  seal,  bursts  upon  the  sight  of  some  well-designed 
allegory,  some  type,  some  youthful  fancy,  not  without  verses — 

Lovers  all, 
A  madrigal, 

or  some  such  device,  not  over  abundant  in  sense — young  Love 
disclaims  it, — and  not  quite  silly — something  between  wind  and 
water,  a  chorus  where  the  sheep  might  almost  join  the  shepherd, 
as  they  did,  or  as  I  apprehend  they  did,  in  Arcadia. 


VALENTINE'S  DAY.  89 

All  Valentines  are  not  foolish ;  and  I  shall  not  easily  forget 
thine,  my  kind  friend  (if  I  may  have  leave  to  call  you  so)  E.  B. 
— E.  B.  lived  opposite  a  young  maiden  whom  he  had  often  seen, 
unseen,  from  his  parlor  window  in  C — e  street.  She  was  all 
joyousness  and  innocence,  and  just  of  an  age  to  enjoy  receiving 
a  Valentine,  and  just  of  a  temper  to  bear  the  disappointment  of 
missing  one  with  good  humor.  E.  B.  is  an  artist  of  no  common 
powers  ;  in  the  fancy  parts  of  designing,  perhaps  inferior  to  none ; 
his  name  is  known  at  the  bottom  of  many  a  well-executed  vignette 
in  the  way  of  his  profession,  but  no  further  ;  for  E.  B.  is  modest, 
and  the  world  meets  nobody  half-way.  E.  B.  meditated  how  he 
could  repay  this  young  maiden  for  many  a  favor  which  she  had 
done  him  unknown ;  for  when  a  kindly  face  greets  us,  though 
but  passing  by,  and  never  knows  us  again,  nor  we  it,  we  should 
feel  it  as  an  obligation  :  and  E.  B.  did.  This  good  artist  set 
himself  at  work  to  please  the  damsel.  It  was  just  before  Valen- 
tine's day  three  years  since.  He  wrought,  unseen  and  unsus- 
pected, a  wondrous  work.  We  need  not  say  it  was  on  the  finest 
gilt  paper  with  borders — full,  not  of  common  hearts  and  heartless 
allegory,  but  all  the  prettiest  stories  of  love  from  Ovid,  and  older 
poets  than  Ovid  (for  E.  B.  is  a  scholar).  There  was  Py ramus 
and  Thisbe,  and  be  sure  Dido  was  not  forgot,  nor  Hero  and 
Leander,  and  swans  more  than  sang  in  Cayster,  with  mottoes  and 
fanciful  devices,  such  as  beseemed, — a  work  in  short  of  magic. 
Iris  dipt  the  woof  This  on  Valentine's  eve  he  commended  to  the 
all-swallowing  indiscriminate  orifice — (O  ignoble  trust !) — of  the 
common  post ;  but  the  humble  medium  did  its  duty,  and  from  his 
watchful  stand,  the  next  morning  he  saw  the  cheerful  messenger 
knock,  and  by  and  by  the  precious  charge  delivered.  He  saw, 
unseen,  the  happy  girl  unfold  the  Valentine,  dance  about,  clap  her 
hands,  as  one  after  one  the  pretty  emblems  unfolded  themselves. 
She  danced  about,  not  with  light  love,  or  foolish  expectations,  for 
she  had  no  lover ;  or,  if  she  had,  none  she  knew  that  could  have 
created  those  bright  images  which  delighted  her.  It  was  mor^ 
like  some  fairy  present ;  a  God-send,  as  our  familiarly  pious  an- 
cestors termed  a  benefit  received  where  the  benefactor  was  un- 
known. It  would  do  her  no  harm.  It  would  do  her  good  for 
ever  after.     It  is  good  to  love  the  unknown.     I  only  give  this  as 


90  ELIA. 

a  specimen  of  E.  B.  and  his  modest  way  of  doing  a  concealed 
kindness. 

Good  morrow  to  my  Valentine,  sings  poor  Ophelia  ;  and  no 
better  wish,  but  with  better  auspices,  we  wish  to  all  faithful 
lovers,  who  are  not  too  wise  to  despise  old  legends,  but  are  con- 
tent to  rank  themselves  humble  diocesans  of  old  Bishop  Valentine 
and  his  true  church. 


EARLY  RELATIONS.  »   .  91 


MY  RELATIONS 


I  AM  arrived  at  that  point  of  life  at  which  a  man  may  account 
it  a  blessing,  as  it  is  a  singularity,  if  he  have  either  of  his  parents 
surviving.  I  have  not  that  felicity — and  sometimes  think  feel- 
ingly of  a  passage  in  Browne's  Christian  Morals,  where  he 
speaks  of  a  man  that  hath  lived  sixty  or  seventy  years  in  the 
world.  "  In  such  a  compass  of  time,"  he  says,  "  a  man  may 
have  a  close  apprehension  what  it  is  to  be  forgotten,  when  he 
hath  lived  to  find  none  who  could  remember  his  father,  or  scarce- 
ly the  friends  of  his  youth,  and  may  sensibly  see  with  what  a 
face  in  no  long  time  Oblivion  will  look  upon  himself." 

I  had  an  aunt,  a  dear  and  good  one.  She  was  one  whom  sin- 
gle blessedness  had  soured  to  the  world.  She  often  used  to  say, 
that  I  was  the  only  thing  in  it  which  she  loved ;  and,  when  she 
thought  I  was  quitting  it,  she  grieved  over  me  with  a  mother's  tears. 
A  partiality  quite  so  exclusive  my  reason  cannot  altogether  ap- 
prove. She  was  from  morning  till  night  poring  over  good  books, 
and  devotional  exercises.  Her  favorite  volumes  were,  Thomas  a 
Kempis,  in  Stanhope's  translation  ;  and  a  Roman  Catholic  Prayer 
Book,  with  the  matins  and  complines  regularly  set  down, — terms 
which  I  was  at  that  time  too  young  to  understand.  She  persisted  in 
reading  them,  although  admonished  daily  concerning  their  Pa- 
pistical tendency ;  and  went  to  church  every  Sabbath  as  a  good 
Protestant  should  do.  These  were  the  only  books  she  studied  ; 
though,  I  think  at  one  period  of  her  life,  she  told  me,  she  had 
read  with  great  satisfaction  the  Adventures  of  an  Unfortunate 
Young  Nobleman.  Finding  the  door  of  the  chapel  in  Essex 
street  open  one  day — it  was  in  the  infancy  of  that  heresy — she 
went  in,  liked  the  sermon,  and  the  manner  of  worship,  and  fre- 
quented it  at  intervals  for  some  time  after.     She  came  not  for 


92  ELIA. 


doctrinal  points,  and  never  missed  them.  With  some  little  asperi- 
ties in  her  constitution,  which  I  have  above  hinted  at,  she  was  a 
steadfast,  friendly  being,  and  a  fine  old  Christian.  She  was  a 
woman  of  strong  sense,  and  a  shrewd  mind — extraordinary  at  a 
repartee  ;  one  of  the  few  occasions  of  her  breaking  silence — else 
she  did  not  much  value  wit.  The  only  secular  employment  I 
remember  to  have  seen  her  engaged  in,  was,  the  splitting  of 
French  beans,  and  dropping  them  into  a  china  basin  of  fair  wa- 
ter. The  odor  of  those  tender  vegetables  to  this  day  comes  back 
upon  my  sense,  redolent  of  soothing  recollections.  Certainly  it 
is  the  most  delicate  of  culinary  operations. 

Male  aunts,  as  somebody  calls  them,  I  had  none — ^to  remember. 
By  the  uncle's  side  I  may  have  been  said  to  have  been  born  an 
orphan.  Brother,  or  sister,  I  never  had  any — ^to  know  them.  A 
sister,  I  think,  that  should  have  been  Elizabeth,  died  in  both  our 
infancies.  What  a  comfort,  or  what  a  care,  may  I  not  have 
missed  in  her  ! — But  I  have  cousins  sprinkled  about  in  Hertford- 
shire— besides  two,  with  whom  I  have  been  all  my  life  in  habits 
of  the  closest  intimacy,  and  whom  I  may  term  cousins  par 
excellence.  These  are  James  and  Bridget  Elia.  They  are 
older  than  myself  by  twelve,  and  ten,  years  ;  and  neither  of  them 
seems  disposed,  in  matters  of  advice  and  guidance,  to  waive  any 
of  the  prerogatives  which  primogeniture  confers.  May  they  con- 
tinue still  in  the  same  mind ;  and  when  they  shall  be  seventy-five, 
and  seventy-three,  years  old  (I  cannot  spare  them  sooner),  persist 
in  treating  me  in  my  grand  climacteric  precisely  as  a  stripling,  or 
younger  brother ! 

James  is  an  inexplicable  cousin.  Nature  hath  her  unities, 
which  not  every  critic  can  penetrate ;  or,  if  we  feel,  we  cannot 
explain  them.  The  pen  of  Yorick,  and  of  none  since  his,  could 
have  drawn  J.  E.  entire — those  fine  Shandean  lights  and  shaded, 
which  make  up  his  story.  I  must  limp  after  in  my  poor  antithe- 
tical manner,  as  the  fates  have  given  me  grace  and  talent.  J.  E., 
then,  to  the  eye  of  a  common  observer  at  least — ^seemeth  made  up 
of  contradictory  principles.  The  genuine  child  of  impulse, 
the  frigid  philosopher  of  prudence — the  phlegm  of  my  cousin's 
doctrine  is  invariably  at  war  with  his  temperament,  which  is  high 
sanguine.     With  always  some  fire-new  project  in  his  brain,  J.  E. 


MY  RELATIONS.  93 


is  the  systematic  opponent  of  innovation,  and  crier  down  of  every- 
thing that  has  not  stood  the  test  of  age  and  experiment.  With  a 
hundred  fine  notions  chasing  one  another  hourly  in  his  fancy,  he 
is  startled  at  the  least  approach  to  the  romantic  in  others  :  and, 
determined  by  his  own  sense  in  everything,  commends  you  to  the 
guidance  of  common  sense  on  all  occasions. — With  a  touch  of  the 
eccentric  in  all  which  he  does,  or  says,  he  is  only  anxious  that 
I  you  should  not  commit  yourself  by  doing  anything  absurd  or  sin- 
gular.  On  my  once  letting  slip  at  table,  that  I  was  not  fond  of  a 
certain  popular  dish,  he  begged  me  at  any  rate  not  to  say  so — for 
the  world  would  think  me  mad.  He  disguises  a  passionate  fond- 
ness for  works  of  high  art  (whereof  he  hath  amassed  a  choice  col- 
lection), under  the  pretext  of  buying  only  to  sell  again — that  his 
enthusiasm  may  give  no  encouragement  to  yours.  Yet,  if  it  were 
so,  why  does  that  piece  of  tender,  pastoral  Domenichino  hang  still 
by  his  wall  ? — is  the  ball  of  his  sight  much  more  dear  to  him  ? — 
or  what  picture-dealer  can  talk  like  him  ? 

Whereas  mankind  in  general  are  observed  to  warp  their  spe- 
culative conclusions  to  the  bent  of  their  individual  humors,  his 
theories  are  sure  to  be  in  diametrical  opposition  to  his  constitu- 
tion. He  is  courageous  as  Charles  of  Sweden,  upon  instinct ; 
chary  of  his  person  upon  principle,  as  a  travelling  Quaker.  He 
has  been  preaching  up  to  me,  all  my  life,  the  doctrine  of  bowing 
to  the  great — ^the  necessity  of  forms,  and  manner,  to  a  man's  get- 
ting on  in  the  world.  He  himself  never  aims  at  either,  that  I  can 
discover, — and  has  a  spirit  that  would  stand  upright  in  the  pre- 
sence of  the  Cham  of  Tartary.  It  is  pleasant  to  hear  him  dis- 
course of  patience — extolling  it  as  the  truest  wisdom — and  to  see 
him  during  the  last  seven  minutes  that  his  dinner  is  getting  ready. 
Nature  never  ran  up  in  her  haste  a  more  restless  piece  of  work- 
manship than  when  she  moulded  this  impetuous  cousin — and  Art 
never  turned  out  a  more  elaborate  orator  than  he  can  display  him- 
self to  be,  upon  this  favorite  topic  of  the  advantages  of  quiet  and 
contentedness  in  the  state,  whatever  it  be,  that  we  are  placed  in. 
He  is  triumphant  on  this  theme,  when  he  has  you  safe  in  one  of 
those  short  stages  that  ply  for  the  western  road,  in  a  very  obstruct- 
ing manner,  at  the  foot  of  John  Murray's  street,  where  you  get 
in  when  it  is  empty,  and  are  expected  to  wait  till  the  vehicle  hath 


94  ELIA. 

completed  her  just  freight — a  trying  three-quarters  of  an  hour  to 
some  people.  He  wonders  at  your  fidgetiness — "  where  could  we 
be  better  than  we  are,  ihiis  sitting,  thus  consulting  V — "  prefers,  for 
his  part,  a  state' of  rest  to  locomotion," — with  an  eye  all  the  while 
upon  the  coachman, — till  at  length,  waxing  out  of  all  patience,  at 
your  want  of  it,  he  breaks  out  into  a  pathetic  remonstrance  at  the 
fellow  for  detaining  us  so  long  over  the  time  which  he  had  pro- 
fessed, and  declares  peremptorily,  that  ''  the  gentleman  in  the 
coach  is  determined  to  get  out,  it  he  does  not  drive  on  that 
instant." 

Very  quick  at  inventing  an  argument,  or  detecting  a  sophistry, 
he  is  incapable  of  attending  you  in  any  chain  of  arguing.  In- 
deed he  makes  wild  work  with  logic,  and  seems  to  jump  at  most 
admirable  conclusions  by  some  process  not  at  all  akin  to  it.  Con- 
sonantly enough  to  this,  he  hath  been  heard  to  deny,  upon  certain 
occasions,  that  there  exists  such  a  faculty  at  all  in  man  as  reason  ; 
and  wondereth  how  man  came  first  to  have  a  conceit  of  it — en- 
forcing his  negation  with  all  the  might  of  reasoning  he  is  master 
of.  He  has  some  speculative  notions  against  laughter,  and  will 
maintain  that  laughing  is  not  natural  to  him — when  peradventure 
the  next  moment  his  lungs  shall  crow  like  Chanticleer.  He  says 
some  of  the  best  things  in  the  world,  and  declareth  that  wit  is  his 
aversion.  It  was  he  who  said,  upon  seeing  the  Eton  boys  at  play 
in  their  grounds — What  a  pity  to  think,  that  these  fine  ingenuous 
lads  in  a  few  years  will  all  he  changed  into  frivolous  Members  of 
Parliament ! 

His  youth  was  fiery,  glowing,  tempestuous — and  in  age  he  dis- 
covereth  no  symptom  of  cooling.  This  is  that  which  I  admire  in 
him.  I  hate  people  who  meet  Time  half-way.  I  am  for  no  com- 
promise with  that  inevitable  spoiler.  While  he  lives,  J.  E.  will 
take  his  swing.  It  does  me  good,  as  I  walk  towards  the  street  of 
my  daily  avocation,  on  some  fine  May  morning,  to  meet  him 
marching  in  a  quite  opposite  direction,  with  a  jolly  handsome 
presence,  and  shining  sanguine  face,  that  indicates  some  purchase 
in  his  eye — a  Claude  or  a  Hobbima — for  much  of  his  enviable 
leisure  is  consumed  at  Christie's  and  Phillips's — or  where  not,  to 
pick  up  pictures,  and  such  gauds.  On  these  occasions  he  mostly 
stoppeth  me,  to,  read  a  short  lecture  on  the  advantage  a  person 


MY  RELATIONS.  93 


like  me  possesses  above  himself,  in  having  his  time  occupied  with 
business  which  he  must  do  ;  assureth  me  that  he  often  feels  it  hang 
heavy  on  his  hands  ;  wishes  he  had  fewer  holidays,  and  goes  off — 
Westward  Ho  ! — chanting  a  tune  to  Pall  Mall,  perfectly  convinced 
that  he  has  convinced  me — while  I  proceed  in  my  opposite  direc- 
tion tuneless. 

It  is  pleasant  again  to  see  this  Professor  of  Indifference  doing 
the  honors  of  his  new  purchase,  when  he  has  fairly  housed  it. 
You  must  view  it  in  every  light,  till  he  has  found  the  best — 
placing  it  at  this  distance,  and  at  that,  but  always  suiting  the 
focus  of  your  sight  to  his  own.  You  must  spy  at  it  through 
your  fingers,  to  catch  the  aerial  perspective,  though  you  assure 
him  that  to  you  the  landscape  shows  much  more  agreeable 
without  that  artifice.  Wo  be  to  the  luckless  wight,  who  does 
not  only  not  respond  to  his  rapture,  but  who  should  drop  an  unsea- 
sonable intimation  of  preferring  one  of  his  anterior  bargains  to 
the  present !  The  last  is  always  his  best  hit — his  "  Cynthia  of 
the  minute."  Alas !  how  many  a  mild  Madonna  have  I  known 
to  come  in — a  Raphael ! — keep  its  ascendency  for  a  few  brief 
moons — then,  after  certain  intermedial  degradations,  from  the 
front  drawing-room  to  the  back  gallery,  thence  to  the  dark  parlor, 
adopted  in  turn  by  each  of  the  Carracci,  under  successive  lower- 
ing ascriptions  of  filiation,  mildly  breaking  its  fall — consigned  to 
the  oblivious  lumber-room,  go  out  at  last  a  Lucca  Giordano,  or 
plain  Carlo  Maratti ! — which  things  when  I  beheld,  musing  upon 
the  chances  and  mutabilities  of  fate  below,  hath  made  me  to 
reflect  upon  the  altered  condition  of  great  personages,  or  that 
woful  Queen  of  Richard  the  Second — 


set  forth  in  pomp, 


She  came  adorned  hither  like  sweet  May 
Sent  back  like  HoUowmass  or  shortest  day. 

With  great  love  for  ym,  J.  E.  hath  but  a  limited  sympathy 
with  what  you  feel  or  do.  He  lives  in  a  world  of  his  own,  and 
makes  slender  guesses  at  what  passes  in  your  mind.  He  never 
pierces  the  marrow  of  your  habits.  He  will  tell  an  old  estab- 
lished playgoer,  that  Mr.  Such-a-one,  of  So-and-so  (naming  one 
of  the  theatres),  is  a  very  lively  comedian-^as  a  piece  of  news  » 


96  ELIA. 

He  advertised  me  but  the  other  day  of  some  pleasant  green  lanes 
which  he  had  found  out  for  me,  knowing  me  to  he  a  great  walker  in 
my  own  immediate  vicinity,  who  have  haunted  the  identical  spot 
any  time  these  twenty  years  !  He  has  not  much  respect  for  thai 
class  of  feelings  which  goes  by  the  name  of  sentimental.  He 
applies  the  definition  of  real  evil  to  bodily  sufferings  exclusively, 
and  rejecteth  all  others  as  imaginary.  He  is  affected  by  the 
sight,  or  the  bare  supposition,  of  a  creature  in  pain,  to  a  degree 
which  I  have  never  witnessed  out  of  womankind.  A  constitu- 
tional acuteness  to  this  class  of  sufferings  may  in  part  account  for 
this.  The  animal  tribe  in  particular  he  taketh  under  his  especial 
protection.  A  broken- winded  or  spur-galled  horse  is  sure  to  find 
an  advocate  in  him.  An  over-loaded  ass  is  his  client  for  ever. 
He  is  the  apostle  to  the  brute  kind — the  never-failing  friend  of 
those  who  have  none  to  care  for  them.  The  contemplation  of 
a  lobster  boiled,  or  eels  skinned  alive,  will  wring  him  so,  that  "  all 
for  pity  he  could  die."  It  will  take  the  savor  from  his  palate,  and 
the  rest  from  his  pillow,  for  days  and  nights.  With  the  intense 
feeling  of  Thomas  Clarkson,  he  wanted  only  the  steadiness  of 
pursuit,  and  unity  of  purpose,  of  that  "  true  yoke-fellow  with 
Time,"  to  have  effected  as  much  for  the  Animal,  as  he  hath  done 
for  the  Negro  Creation.  But  my  uncontrollable  cousin  is  but  imper- 
fectly formed  for  purposes  which  demand  co-operation.  He  can- 
not wait.  His  amelioration-plans  must  be  ripened  in  a  day.  For 
this  reason  he  has  cut  but  an  equivocal  figure  in  benevolent  soci- 
eties, and  combinations  for  the  alleviation  of  human  sufferings. 
His  zeal  constantly  makes  him  to  outrun,  and  put  out,  his  coad- 
jutors. He  thinks  of  relieving,  while  they  think  of  debating. 
He  was  black-balled  out  of  a  society  for  the  Relief  of  *  "^  *  *  * 
******,  because  the  fervor  of  his  humanity  toiled  beyond 
the  formal  apprehension,  and  creeping  processes,  of  his  associates. 
I  shall  always  consider  this  distinction  as  a  patent  of  nobility  in 
the  Elia  family  ! 

Do  I  mention  these  seeming  inconsistencies  to  smile  at,  or  up- 
braid, my  unique  cousin  ?  Marry,  heaven,  and  all  good  manners, 
and  the  understanding  that  should  be  between  kinsfolk,  forbid ! 
With  all  the  strangenesses  of  this  strangest  of  the  Elias — I  would 
not  have  him  in  one  jot  or  tittle  other  than  he  is  ;  neither  would 


MY  RELATIONS.  97 


I  barter  or  exchange  my  wild  kinsman  for  the  most  exact,  regu- 
lar, and  everyway  consistent  kinsman  breathing. 

In  my  next,  reader,  I  may  perhaps  give  you  some  account  of 
my  cousin  Bridget — if  you  are  not  already  surfeited  with  cousins 
— and  take  you  by  the  hand,  if  you  are  willing  to  go  with  us,  on 
an  excursion  which  we  made  a  summer  or  two  since,  in  search 
Q^more  cousins — 

Through  the  green  plains  of  pleasant  Hertfordshire 

PART  I.  8    , 

.!  ;in-       r.  ^Ull',)-,     nit   -.fftlOl    r5';ji):,        ',    .         :.i.t'tt»l^:&i.  1 

i»>  o'.   c.Ai   no,]  ill  )M  f  g  N-n  tJi.u  ,f  rn  (ill    ..|  a  •{r,t  .1  x^.i^     -rH-i    f 
Jiu-i. f)-   (  .  .«inj'  .>tlo  'r»in.il  m  ii  >  .•?  dif^v  )  untnu   m    '       .v>t!»f  Vf 

;     fL:.:        ,1:   -   .  Xi;)     :»jv«    1:1     «;     !(V     M 
O'.'    tjiil    ii,    /Di   ,..."■  I <-.     i'fi  .      ,.      i     ,;.    ..-        ,^; 

■■£.     .   i>;  f^f/I  T/ i     il    fif       f)..    )>.j   ,r    ,.i      ij    MO'i     e '>    •        .♦.t«?fU  y. 
ir«»     iJtiiJ    (31    f.     .10(0 V       :1        ;      ^  j<    X/jrAlm^l  *  O   V'P-  .    0(J  i 

..V    I    .iiUI    00  'ijBK(f;a    ;      •;'.a  ^'li  .>».    ttS"-  r^^lit\   t\MU^  Vllf/nji  till'' 

ill!;  .%'..  j;;o(  Mi'*:^«:  ;   :v  iinjw    m    to  »  7.>    ■.  ;imfii:?j 

'..•5  .a^.i-^/T)  ;.  tifc/ .tuna  <'.fU  r.f  fn.- :ri,)f,  fjj  {/ ;  y..  r  .'j:..  ?.?>iS-; 
3*f9r-  on — ni.'ij  7l'.>  •f.Hrt;bf  r  ,-  .ii,  ihv -.  ^-/,«iT>.  i-  nvjs.i  >ii.Yi 
.MjJt  /kI  i  ^iiV'..:;  :;•'•)  y.-on  u'.  •///  ilj  r"  /;  .t  "J  np  n  :•;  'inl 
87r.  -MI If  :  -.-■  ;:  : ■.,,,':  .i  Ui  — -itof.i.'ji  ;.■  ^.iij.ri  'u  .>  a.foiifirjt 
•^i  /  nn:;.  0..,....;  ,  1,  hoqu  vfii  ij  J  £  ^-jao  •  •-»  .::^9  «  •  oj  .  jgii- -. 
-  -m  'r'.*  f  .rvM  v.i;ir:^  ;ir  it.  *.-  n?;  f  T!jjf>|{.-  .>no  ii  r-  -'  ^  ^v!  -..i 
.•    A.>;;'    af-^1     ;:     \*  :,.;..         .,     j<--oifl    tj:     -i",.    J^i.;.  .:; 

.fil-oi';  Vr./        .    iO   or)0  J    .  ,1;  m;'M:  y'ld  ..;  i-l>i  .^-.^iJ    .;7.;;^:i 

■■'■'   =^'  '  '  "'  ■'"'    '■^''   •'.•'If* '••'!;  rii"-  .if^.i   ri*:  //fpjch  i.'K--i 

'  ■''    '/  ?*•  ;  iKV-fdu    ; 


r.  ^'H 


'JvfUiv, 


9S  ELIA. 


MACKEBY  END,  IN  HERTFORDSHIRE. 


Bridget  Elia  has  been  my  housekeeper  for  many  a  long  year. 
I  have  obligations  to  Bridget,  .extending  beyond  the  period  of 
memory.  We  house  together,  old  bachelor  and  maid,  in  a  sort 
of  double  singleness ;  with  such  tolerable  comfort,  upon  the 
whole,  that  I,  for  one,  find  in  myself  no  sort  of  disposition  to  go 
out  upon  the  mountains,  with  the  rash  king's  offspring,  to  bewail 
my  celibacy.  We  agree  pretty  well  in  our  tastes  and  habits — 
yet  so,  as  "  with  a  difference."  We  are  generally  in  harmony, 
with  occasional  bickerings — as  it  should  be  among  near  relations. 
Our  sympathies  are  rather  understood,  than  expressed ;  and 
once,  upon  my  dissembling  a  tone  in  my  voice  more  kind  than 
ordinary,  my  cousin  burst  into  tears,  and  complained  that  I  was 
altered.  We  are  both  great  readers  in  different  directions.  While 
I  am  hanging  over  (for  the  thousandth  time)  some  passage  in  old 
Burton,  or  one  of  his  strange  contemporaries,  she  is  abstracted  in 
some  modern  tale,  or  adventure,  whereof  our  common  reading- 
table  is  daily  fed  with  assiduously  fresh  supplies.  Narrative 
teases  me.  I  have  little  concern  in  the  progress  of  events.  She 
must  have  a  story — well,  ill,  or  indifferently  told — so  there  be 
life  stirring  in  it,  and  plenty  of  good  or  evil  accidents.  The  fluc- 
tuations of  fortune  in  fiction — and  almost  in  real  life— ^have 
ceased  to  interest,  or  operate  but  dully  upon  me.  Out-of-the-way 
humors  and  opinions — heads  with  some  diverting  twist  in  them — 
the  oddities  of  authorship  please  me  most.  My  cousin  has  a 
native  disrelish  of  anything  that  sounds  odd  or  bizarre.  Nothing 
goes  down  with  her,  that  is  quaint,  irregular,  or  out  of  the  road 
of  common  sympathy.  She  "  holds  Nature  more  clever."  I  can 
pardon  her  blindness  to  the  beautiful  obliquities  of  the  Religio 


MACKERY  END,  IN  HERTFORDSHIRE.  99 

Medici ;  but  she  must  apologise  to  me  for  certain  disrespectful  in- 
sinuations, which  she  has  been  pleased  to  throw  out  laiierly,  touch- 
ing the  intellectuals  of  a  dear  favorite  of  mine,  of  the  last  century 
but  one — the  thrice  noble,  chaste,  and  virtuous, — but  again  some- 
what fantastical,  and  original-brained,  generous  Margaret  New- 
castle. 

It  has  been  the  lot  of  my  cousin,  oftener  perhaps  than  I  could 
have  wished,  to  have  had  for  her  associates  and  mine,  free-think- 
ers— leaders,  and  disciples,  of  novel  philosophies  and  systems ; 
but  she  neither  wrangles  with,  nor  accepts,  their  opinions.  That 
which  was  good  and  venerable  to  her,  when  a  child,  retains  its 
authority  over  her  mind  still.  She  never  juggles  or  plays  tricks 
with  her  understanding. 

We  are  both  of  usThclined  to  be  a  little  too  positive ;  and  1 
have  observed  the  result  of  our  disputes  to  be  almost  uniformly 
this — that  in  matters  of  fact,  dates,  and  circumstances,  it  turns 
out,  that  I  was  in  the  right,  and  my  cousin  in  the  wrong.  But 
where  we  have  differed  upon  moral  points ;  upon  something  pro- 
per to  be  done,  or  let  alone ;  whatever  heat  of  opposition,  or 
steadiness  of  conviction,  I  set  out  with,  I  am  sure  always,  in  the 
long-run,  to  be  brought  over  to  her  way  of  thinking. 

I  must  touch  upon  the  foibles  of  my  kinswoman  with  a  gentle 
hand,  for  Bridget  does  not  like  to  be  told  of  her  faults.  She  hath 
an  awkward  trick  (to  say  no  worse  of  it)  of  reading  in  company  : 
at  which  times  she  will  answer  yes  or  tio  to  a  question,  without  fully 
understanding  its  purport — which  is  provoking,  and  derogatory  in 
the  highest  degree  to  the  dignity  of  the  putter  of  the  said  question. 
Her  presence  of  mind  is  equal  to  the  most  pressing  trials  of  life, 
but  will  sometimes  desert  her  upon  trifling  occasions.  When  the 
purpose  requires  it,  and  is  a  thing  of  moment,  she  can  speak  to 
it  greatly  ;  but  in  matters  which  are  not  stuff  of  the  conscience, 
she  hath  been  known  sometimes  to  let  slip  a  word  less  seasonably. 

Her  education  in  youth  was  not  much  attended  to  ;  and  she 
happily  missed  all  that  train  of  female  garniture,  which  passeth 
by  the  name  of  accomplishments.  She  was  tumbled  early,  by 
accident  or  design,  into  a  spacious  closet  of  good  old  English 
reading,  without  much  selection  or  prohibition,  and  browsed  at 
will  upon  that  fair  and  wholesome  pasturage.     Had  I  twenty 


100  ' ELIAL 


girl ^,  they: shoU'M  be  brought  up  exactly  ia  thi^  fasbioi;^.  I)^o^ 
not  whether  their  chance  in  .wedlock  might  not  be  dimimshed  by. 
it ;  but  I  can  answer  for  it,  that  it  makes  (if  the  worst  come  to 
thfe  worst)  most'  incomparable  old  maids.      ,  , . ,    ;,,,., 

'In  a  season' of  distress,  she  is;  the  truest  comfprt^r  j ,  ,%t  in  ,tJje, 
teasing  accidents,  and  minor  perplexities,  which  do  not  call  put, 
the  z^?z7/  to  meet  them,  she  sometimes,  maketh  mattery  worse^by  an 
excess  of  participation.  If  she  does  not  always  diyide  ypijii;'. 
trouble.  Upon  the  pleasanter  occasions  of  life  she  is  sure  always, 
to  treble  your  satisfaction.  She  is  excellent  to  be  at  pl^j  with,  pJ!^, 
lipbri  ^a  visit ;  but  best,  when  she  goes  a  journey  with  ;you,        ,, 

Wte  mad6  an^  excursicm  together  a  few  summers  ^ince,  into 
Hertfordshire,  to  beat  up  the  quarters  of  some  of  pnr.less-knowiji, 
relations  in  that  fine  corn  county.  .  .. .    :    , 

The  bldest  thing  I  remember  is  Mackery  End ;  pr  Mackerel 
Ehd,  as'it  is  spelt,  perhaps  more  properly,  in  some,  old  jjiaps  pf; 
Hertfordshire ;  a  farm-house,— delightfully  situated  within  a^gentle 
walk  from  Wheathai*npstead.  I  can  just  remember,  having  been 
thiere,  oil  a  visit  to  a  great-aunt,  when  I  was  a  child,  under  the 
dUre  of  Bridget ;  who,  as  I  have  said,  lis  older  ;than  myself,  by 
some  ten  years. '  I  wish  that  I  could  throw  into  a  heap  the  .ri^- 
mainder  of  our  joint  existences;  that  we  might  share  them^in 
6^ual  division.  But  that  is  impossible.  The  Jiouse^was..at,.tl;^^ 
tiiTh'e' iri  the  occupation  of  a  substantial  yeoman,  who  had  married,- 
my  grkndn^other's  siste^r.'  His  name  was  Gladman.  ,  My  grand- 
rriothei^'was  a  Bruton,  married  to  a  Field.  The  Gladnians  an(i 
the  Bt-utons  are  still  flourishing  in  that  part  of  the  county,  bijit; 
the  Fields  are  almost  extinct.  -  More  than  forty  years  had  elapsed 
sincP  the"  visit  I  spfeak  of ;  and,  for.  the  greater  portion  i  of  that 
p'^riod^'We  had  lost  sight  of  the  other  two  branohesalso.  :  AiVho 
p'r  "vt^hat  *s6rt  of'  persons  inherited  Mackery  End-^kindred  o^ 
strange  folk^^^we  were  afraid  almost  ■  to  conjecture, .  but  detex* 
rilihed  some  day  to  explore.  ;-     ;  .  .   ;. 

'' By  somewhat  a  circuitous  route,  taking  the  noble. park  at  Lutpn 
ih '  our  way  from  Saint  Albans,  wie  arrived  at  the  spot  of  our 
anxious  curiosity  about  noon.  The  sight  of  the  old  farm-house, 
though  every  trace  of  it  was  effaced  from  my  recollection,  affected 
me  with  a  pleasure  which  I  had  not  experienced  for  many  a  year. 


*.A<#; 


MACKERY  END,  IN  HERTFORDSHIRE.  101 

For  though  /  had  forgotten  it,  we  had  never  forgotten  being  there 
together,  and  we  had  been  talking  about  Mackery  End  all  our, 
lives,  till  memory  on  my  part  became  mocked  with  a  phantom  of 
itself,  and  I  thought  I  knew  the  aspect  of  a  place,  which,.  wbej[i 
present,'  O  how  unlike  it  was  to  //ifl/,r which  I  had  conjured  up  soi 
many  times  instead  of  it ! 

Still  the  air  breathed  balmily  about  its;  the  season  was  in  Ui©i 

"  heart  of  June/ ^  and  I  could  say  with  the  poet,  r  n;    ■■u'l: 

<"'"        '^  1   'M!'   .''       ■    '■»•;(•    ..•-    ,  ••!.'  -■    '•   )) — I'M    •)■(.•    '■.••;••;  h'.)'j:-' 

•     '  -  .       But  tbp^:^  that  didst  appear  so, fei|:,  ^        ^  -.^.rj'-)  m.-v' 

To  fond  imagination,  '    -.    -•    ..i 

Dost  rival  in  the  light  of  day    '»«'.•    "i«"  J  I'"     ""'•» 

o  ! '       .u  }  all  o'l:  5  Her  delieatfe  cveitidh'l  ''*Jf  "'•'  '*''.  »'i  *»»  '"  r  >.'•  'ah/ 

"U  I  X.    .'ytl---     ,'l/J,"  ■       •  ■■.,-,'     KC      /        '  ii;.        Mi     M'.'f  i!    .'   1     •)* 

Bridget^s  was  more  a  waking;; bliss  than  mine,  fw  she  easily- 
remembered  her  old  acquaintance  again— some  altered  featums,r 
of 'course,  a  little  grudged  at.  At  first,  indeed,  she  was  ready- 
to  disbelieve  for  joy;  but  the  scene  soon  re^con firmed  itself  ini 
her  affections — and  she  traversed  every;  outpst  of  the  old  man-> 
sion,  to  the  wood- house,  the  orchard^  the  place  Wihoi*©  the  pigeon* 
house  had  stood  (house  and  birds  were  alike  flown) — with  a: 
breathless  impatience  of  recognition,  which  was  more  j)ardoiiable: 
perhaps  than  decorous  at  tlie  age  of  fiilyodd.  But  Bridget  in 
some  things  is  behind  her  years.        ;      "  -  n!   •       ...••  n'l    /    >   t 

The  only  thing  left  was  to  get  into  the  Jwuse+^and;  that  was  a; 
difficulty  which  to  me  singly  woiild  have  been  insurniounlable';^ 
f6r  1  am  terribly  shy  in  niakhig  myself  known  to; strangers  and 
otit-of-dat6  kinsfolk.  Love,  stronger  than  scruple,  winged  my 
cbusin  in  without  me  ;  but  she  soon  returned  with  a  creature  that 
might  haVis  s^t  to  a  sculptor  for  the  image  of  Welcomes  It  was  the 
youngest  of  the  Gladmans  ;  who,  by  marriage  witli  a  Bruton,  irad  * 
becomfe  mistress  of  the  old  mansion  i  A  comely  brood  arc  the! 
Brutons.  Six  of  them,  females,  were  noted  as  the  handsomest 
young  women  in  the  county.  But  tins  adopted  Bruton,  in  my 
mind,  was  better  than  they  all — more  comely.  She  was  born  too 
late  to  have  remembered  me.  She  just  recollected  in  early  life 
to  have  had  her  cousin  Bridget  once  pointed  out  to  her,  climbing 
a  stile.  But  the  name  of  kindred,  and  of  cousinship,  was  enougli. 
Those  slender  ties,  that  prove  slight  as  gossamer  in  the  rending 


102  ELIA. 

atmosphere  of  a  metropolis,  bind  faster,  as  we  found  it,  in  hearty, 
homely,  loving  Hertfordshire. — In  five  minutes  we  were  as 
thoroughly  acquainted  as  if  we  had  been  born  and  bred  up  toge- 
ther ;  were  familiar,  even  to  the  calling  each  other  by  our  Chris- 
tian nan>es.  So  Christians  should  call  one  another.  To  have 
seen  Bridget,  and  her — it  was  like  the  meeting  of  the  two  scrip, 
tural  cousins  !  There  was  a  grace  and  dignity,  an  amplitude  of 
form  and  stature,  answering  to  her  mind,  in  this  farmer's  wife, 
which  would  have  shined  in  a  palace — or  so  we  thought  it.  We 
were  made  welcome  by  husband  and  wife  equally — we,  and  our 
friend  that  was  with  us. — I  had  almost  forgotten  him — but  B.  F. 
will  not  so  soon  forget  that  meeting,  if  peradventure  he  shall  read 
this  on  the  far  distant  shores  where  the  kangaroo  haunts.  The 
fatted  calf  was  made  read}^  or  rather  was  already  so,  as  if  in  an- 
ticipation of  our  coming ;  and,  after  an  appropriate  glass  of  native 
wine,  never  let  me  forget  with  what  honest  pride  this  hospitable 
cousin  made  us  proceed  to  Wheathampstead,  to  introduce  us  (as 
some  new-found  rarity)  to  her  mother  and  sister  Gladmans,  who 
did  indeed  know  something  more  of  us,  at  a  time  when  she  almost 
knew  nothing. — With  what  corresponding  kindness  we  were  re- 
ceived by  them  also — how  Bridget's  memory,  exalted  by  the 
occasion,  warmed  into  a  thousand  half-obliterated  recollections  of 
things  and  persons,  to  my  utter  astonishment,  and  her  own — and 
to  the  astoundment  of  B.  F.  who  sat  by,  almost  the  only  thing 
that  was  not  a  cousin  there, — old  effaced  images  of  more  than 
half- forgotten  names  and  circumstances  still  crowding  back  upon 
her,  as  words  written  in  lemon  come  out  upon  exposure  to  a 
friendly  warmth, — when  I  forget  all  this,  then  may  my  country 
cousins  forget  me  ;  and  Bridget  no  more  remember,  that  in  the 
days  of  weakling  infancy  I  was  her  tender  charge — as  I  have 
been  her  care  in  foolish  manhood  since — in  those  pretty  pastoral 
walks,  long  ago,  about  Mackery  End,  in  Hertfordshire. 


MY  FIRST  PLAY.  103 


MY  FIRST  PLAY. 


At  the  north  end  of  Cross-court  there  yet  stands  a  portal,  of  some 
architectural  pretensions,  though  reduced  to  humble  use,  serving 
at  present  for  an  entrance  to  a  printing-office.  This  old  door- way, 
if  you  are  young,  reader,  you  may  not  know  was  the  identical  pit 
entrance  to  old  Drury — Garrick's  Drury — all  of  it  that  is  left.  I 
never  pass  it  without  shaking  some  forty  years  from  off  my  shoul- 
ders, recurring  to  the  evening  when  I  passed  through  it  to  see  my 
first  play.  The  afternoon  had  been  wet,  and  the  condition  of  our 
going  (the  elder  folks  and  myself)  was,  that  the  rain  should  cease. 
With  what  a  beating  heart  did  I  watch  from  the  window  the  pud- 
dles, from  the  stillness  of  which  I  was  taught  to  prognosticate  the 
desired  cessation !  I  seem  to  remember  the  last  spurt,  and  the  glee 
with  which  I  ran  to  announce  it. 

We  went  with  orders,  which  my  godfather  F.  had  sent  us.  He 
kept  the  oil  shop  (now  Davies's)  at  the  corner  of  Featherstone- 
buildings,  in  Hoi  born.  F.  was  a  tall  grave  person,  lofty  in  speech, 
and  had  pretensions  above  his  rank.  He  associated  in  those  days 
with  John  Palmer,  the  comedian,  whose  gait  and  bearing  he 
seemed  to  copy  ;  if  John  (which  is  quite  as  likely)  did  not  rather 
borrow  somewhat  of  his  manner  from  my  godfather.  He  was 
also  known  to,  and  visited  by,  Sheridan.  It  was  to  his  house  in 
Holborn  that  young  Brinsley  brought  his  first  wife  on  her  elope- 
ment with  him  from  a  boarding-school  at  Bath — the  beautiful 
Maria  Linley.  My  parents  were  present  (over  a  quadrille  table) 
when  he  arrived  in  the  evening  with  his  harmonious  charge. 
From  either  of  these  connexions  it  may  be  inferred  that  my  god- 
father could  command  an  order  for  the  then  Drury-lane  theatre  at 
pleasure — and,  indeed,  a  pretty  liberal  issue  of  those  cheap  billets, 


104  ELIA. 

in  Brinsley's  easy  autograph,  I  have  heard  him  say  was  the  sole 
remuneration  which  he  had  received  for  many  years'  nightly  illu- 
mination of  the  orchestra  and  various  avenues  of  that  theatre — 
and  he  was  content  it  should  be  so.  The  honor  of  Sheridan's 
familiarity— or  supposed  familiarity — was  better  to  my  godfather 
than  money. 

F.  was  the  most  gentlemanly  of  oilmen ;  grandiloquent,  yet 
courteous.  His  delivery  of  the  commonest  matters  of  fact  was 
Ciceronian.  He  had  two  Latin  words  almost  constantly  in  his 
mouth  (how  odd  sounds  Latin  from  an  oilman's  lips !)  which  my 
better  knowledge  since  has  enabled  me  to  correct.  In  strict  pro- 
nunciation they  should  have  been  sounded  vice  versa — but  in  those 
young  years  they  impressed  me  with  more  awe  than  they  would 
now  4o,  read  aright  from  Seneca  qr  Varro— in  ^i»,own  pepjuliatr 
pronunciation j  monosyllabiqally  el^bqifated,:  or.,  Anglicized,^, ipto 
something  like  verse  verse.  By  an  imposing  n^^nner,  and  tjje  iielp 
of  these  distorted  syllables,  he  <3limbed  (but  that  was  little)  .to-,lh,e 
highest  parochial  honors  which  St.  Apdrew'^has  to  bestow., ^^  :Trri 

He  is  dead — and  thus  much  I  thoughtd^vie  to  his  memory y  both 
for  my  first  orders  (little  wondrous  talismans  !- — slight  keys,  and 
insignificant  to  outward  sight,  but  opening  to  «>e,  more  thaij.  Ara- 
bian paradises  !)  and  moreover  that  bfy  his .  testamentary  benefi- 
cence I  came  into  possession  of  the  only  iaflded  property  which  I 
oould  ever  call  my  own-^situate  neaf  the  .road- way  village  of 
pleasant  Puckeridge,  in,  Hertfordshire*  When  I  journeyed  dowa 
to  take  possession,  and  planted  my  foot  on  my  own  groundyithe 
stately  habits  of  the  donor  descended  ^upon  me,  and  L  strode  (shall 
I  confess  the' vanity  ?)  with  larger  'paees  over  my  allotment  of 
three-quarters  of  an  acre,  with  .its  copipnodious  mansion  in  the 
midst,  withihe  feeling  of  an  Englishifreeholder  that  all  betwixt 
sky  and  centre  was  my  own..  The  estate  has  passed  into  niore 
prudent  hands,  and  nothing  but  an  agrarian  can  restore  it. 

In  those  days  were  pit  orders.  Beshrew  the  uncomfortable 
manager  who  abolished  them !— with-  one  of  these  we  went.  I 
remember  the  waiting  at  the  door — not  that  which  is  left-r— but 
between  that  and'  an  inner  door  in  shelter— r-0  when  shall  I  be  such 
an  expectant  again  I^^with  the  cry  of  nonpareils,  an  indisper^sabJr 
play-house  accompaniment  in  those  days.      As  near  as  Ici" 


MY  FIRST  PLAY.  ^        ld# 


recollect,  the  fashionable  pronunciation  of  the  theatrical  fruiter- 
esses  then  was,  "  Chase  some  oranges,  chase  some  numparel^, 
chase  a  bill  of  the  play;" — chase  ^ro  choose.  But  when  we  got 
ill,  arid  I  beheld  ^he  green  curtain  that  veiled  a  heaven  tornoy 
ihiigination,  whifch  was  soon  to  be  disclosed — the  breathless  anti- 
cipations 1  endured!  1  had  seen  something  like  it  in  the  plate 
{Prefixed  to  Troilus  and  Cressida,  in  Rowe's  Shakspeare — theteot 
sc6h6  with  Diomede— -and  a  sight  of  ;that  iplate  can -always  bring 
back  in  a  measure  the  feeling  of  that  evening.— The  boxes  .at 
tliat  tirhe,  full  of  welUdressed  -women  of  quality,  projected  over 
th6  pit :  Ertld  the '  pilasters :  reaching  down  were  '  adorned  with  ,a 
glistering  substance  (1  know  not  what)  under  glass  (as  it  seemed)^ 
resembling—^  tiomely  fancy^but  I  judged  it  to  be  sUgar-candy — 
yet,  to  my  raised  ittiagiriation,  divested  of  its  homelier  qualities^  it 
appeared  a  glorified  candy  ! — The  orchestra  lights  at  length  arose^ 
those'  *'  fair  Auroras  P^  Once  the  bell  sounded.  It  was  to  ring 
6ut  yet  oride  again^-^nd  dnciapable  of  the  anticipation,  I  repoSed 
my"  shut  ^^' in  a' sort  of  resignation  upon  the  maternal  lap.  It 
rang  the  seteond  tiWife.' '  The  curtain  drew  up^*-I  was  not  past  six 
years  old  and  the  play  wa&  Artaxerxes  f  :     .    • -t  ;  ^  >-   .  .      ,,; 

I  had  dabbled  a  little  in  the  Universal  History*^the  ancient 
pk'rt  of  it— "ahd  here  was  the  court  of  Persiait—^lt  was  being  ad- 
mitted to  a  sight'  6f  th^  past.'  I -took  no  proper  interest  in  the 
action  going  on,  for  I  understood  not  its  impoiJt-^but  I  heard  tiie 
Word  Dariu^,'  an'd  I  was  iiilhe  midst  of  Daniel.  All  feeling  was 
absoirbedlri  vision;  '■  Gbrgeoug  Vests,'  gardens,  palaces,  prineessear, 
passed  before  me.'  I  ' k tie W  riot  players.  I  was'in  Persepolia:for 
the  time,  and  the  burriihg  idol'of  their  *  devotion  almost  converted 
ini^  into  a 'W6i*fehippei^,  Twas  awe-struckj  and  believed  those  sig- 
riifications  to' be  something  more  than  elemental  fires.  It  was  all 
enchantment  and  a  dream.  No  such  pleasure  has  since  visited 
me  but  in  dreams. — Harlequin's  invasion  followed  ;  where,  I  re- 
member, the  transformation  of  the  magistrates  into  reverend  bel- 
dams seemed  to  me  a  piece  of  grave  historic  justicej  and  the  tailor 
carrying  his  own  head  to  be  as  sober  a  verity  as  the  legend  of  St. 
Denys. 

i*he  liext  play  to'  which!  was  taken' wai^  the  Ladjr  6f  th6 
T^anor,  of  which,  with  the  6xc6ption  of  sdriie  scenery,  Veiy  fairit 


106  ELI  A. 

traces  are  left  in  my  memory.  It  was  followed  by  a  pantomime, 
called  Lun's  Ghost — a  satiric  touch,  I  apprehend,  upon  Rich,  not 
long  since  dead — but  to  my  apprehension  (too  sincere  for  satire), 
Lun  was  as  remote  a  piece  of  antiquity  as  Lud — the  father  of  a 
line  of  Harlequins — transmitting  his  dagger  of  lath  (the  wooden 
sceptre)  through  countless  ages.  I  saw  the  primeval  Motley  come 
from  his  silent  tomb  in  a  ghastly  vest  of  white  patch-work,  like 
the  apparition  of  a  dead  rainbow.  So  Harlequins  (thought  I)  look 
when  they  are  dead. 

My  third  play  followed  in  quick  succession.  It  was  the  Way 
of  the  World.  I  think  I  must  have  sat  at  it  as  grave  as  a  judge  ; 
for,  I  remember,  the  hysteric  affectations  of  good  Lady  Wishfort 
affected  me  like  some  solemn  tragic  passion.  Robinson  Crusoe 
followed  ;  in  which  Crusoe,  man  Friday,  and  the  parrot,  were  as 
good  and  authentic  as  in  the  story.— The  clownery  and  pantaloon- 
ery  of  these  pantomimes  have  clean  passed  out  of  my  head.  I 
believe,  I  no  more  laughed  at  them,  than  at  the  same  age  I  should 
have  been  disposed  to  laugh  at  the  grotesque  Gothic  heads 
(seeming  to  me  then  replete  with  devout  meaning),  that  gape,  and 
grin,  in  stone  around  the  inside  of  the  old  Round  Church  (my 
church)  of  the  Templars. 

I  saw  these  plays  in  the  season  1781-2,  when  I  was  from  six 
to  seven  years  old.  After  the  intervention  of  six  or  seven  other 
years  (for  at  school  all  play-going  was  inhibited)  I  again  entered 
the  doors  of  a  theatre.  That  old  Artaxerxes  evening  had  never 
done  ringing  in  my  fancy.  I  expected  the  same  feelings  to  come 
again  with  the  same  occasion.  But  we  differ  from  ourselves  less 
at  sixty  and  sixteen,  than  the  latter  does  from  six.  In  that  inter- 
val what  had  I  not  lost !  At  the  first  period  I  knew  nothing, 
understood  nothing,  discriminated  nothing.  I  felt  all,  loved  all, 
wondered  all — 

/  Was  nourished,  I  could  not  tell  how — 

I  had  left  the  temple  a  devotee,  and  was  returned  a  rationalist. 
The  same  things  were  there  materially ;  but  the  emblem,  the 
reference,  was  gone  ! — The  green  curtain  was  no  longer  a  veil, 
drawn  between  two  worlds,  the  unfolding  of  which  was  to 
bring  back  past  ages  to  present  a  "  royal  ghost," — but  a  certain 


MY  FIRST  PLAY.  107 


quantity  of  green  baize,  which  was  to  separate  the  audience  for  a 
given  time  from  certain  of  their  fellowmen  who  were  to  come 
forward  and  pretend  those  parts.  The  lights — the  orchestra  lights 
— <;ame  up  a  clumsy  machinery.  The  first  ring,  and  the  second 
ring,  was  now  but  a  trick  of  the  prompter's  bell — which  had  been, 
like  the  note  of  a  cuckoo,  a  phantom  of  a  voice,  no  hand  seen  or 
guessed  at  which  ministered  to  its  warning.  The  actors  were  men 
and  women  painted.  I  thought  the  fault  was  in  them  ;  but  it  was 
in  myself,  and  the  alteration  which  those  many  centuries, — of  six 
short  twelve-months — had  wrought  in  me. — Perhaps  it  was 
fortunate  for  me  that  the  play  of  the  evening  was  but  an  indifferent 
comedy,  as  it  gave  me  time  to  crop  some  unreasonable  expecta- 
tions, which  might  have  interfered  with  the  genuine  emotions  with 
which  I  was  soon  after  enabled  to  enter  upon  the  first  appearance 
to  me  of  Mrs.  Siddons  in  Isabella.  Comparison  and  retrospection 
soon  yielded  to  the  present  attraction  of  the  scene  ;  and  the  theatre 
became  to  me.  upon  a  new  stock,  the  most  delightful  of  recrea- 
tions. 


108  ELIA. 


■;  •Ll£;:.]liii    .-U  a;  JXtU  13  '-i        .:/  xki-xl//    .0  'V    '.ITjrj. 


/..^l 


^^^^^^    MODERN  GALLANTRY.      n^  /^   ^ 


'N'VWV>Ni>\/V>/VX/S** 


In  comparing  modem  with  sncient  manners,  we  are  pleased  liotj 
compliment  ourselves ' upon-  the  point  of  gallaatryj  .a  certai^: 
obsequiousness,  or  deferential  respect,  which  we  are  supposed  ta^ 
pay  to  females,  as  females.  i         '     .1  r  0  .i  ■  -       ntj-i.T 

I  shall  believe  that  this  principle  actuates  our  conduci,  when  h 
6tth  foi^et,  that  in  the- nineteenth  century  of  the  era  from  whiehf 
we  date  our  civility,  we  are  but  just  beginning  to  leave  pffjhQf 
very  frequent  practice  of  vt^hipping  females  in  public,  in  commpm 
with  the  coarsest  male  offenders. 

I  shall  believe  it  to  be  influential,  when  I  can  shut  my  eyes  to 
the  fact,  that  in  England  women  are  still  occasionally — hanged. 

I  shall  believe  in  it,  when  actresses  are  no  longer  subject  to  be 
hissed  off  a  stage  by  gentlemen. 

I  shall  believe  in  it,  when  Dorimant  hands  a  fish-wife  across 
the  kennel ;  or  assists  the  apple- woman  to  pick  up  her  wandering 
fruit,  which  some  unlucky  dray  has  just  dissipated. 

I  shall  believe  in  it,  when  the  Dorimants  in  humbler  life,  who 
would  be  thought  in  their  way  notable  adepts  in  this  refinement, 
shall  act  upon  it  in  places  where  they  are  not  known,  or  think 
themselves  not  observed — when  I  shall  see  the  traveller  for  some 
rich  tradesman  part  with  his  admired  box-coat,  to  spread  it  over  the 
defenceless  shoulders  of  the  poor  woman,  who  is  passing  to  her 
parish  on  the  roof  of  the  same  stage-coach  with  him,  drenched  in 
the  rain — when  I  shall  no  longer  see  a  woman  standing  up  in  the 
pit  of  a  London  theatre,  till  she  is  sick  and  faint  with  the  exertion, 
with  men  about  her,  seated  at  their  ease,  and  jeering  at  her  dis- 
tress ;  till  one,  that  «eems  to  have  more  manners  or  conscience 
than  the  rest,  significantly  declares  "  she  should  be  welcome  to 


MODERN  GALLANTRY.  109 

his  seat,  if  she  were  a  little  younger  and  handsomer."  Place  this 
dapper  warehouseman,  or  that  rider,  in  a  circle  of  their  own 
female  acquaintance,  and  you  shall  confess  you  have  not  seen  a 
politer-bred  man  in  Lothbury.     •     i:./  -  <    ,     ...    , 

.  Lastly,  I  shall  begin  to  believe  that  there  is  some  such  principle 
influencing  our  conduct,  when  more  than  one-half  of  the  drudgery, 
and  coarse  servitttdei  of  the  world  shall  cease  to  bc' performed  by 
w6men.  I  ■■.',     •■•■)-.-■",    '•'-,  ji,       ;        •>   ■     •••  .  ■•        -,■  ■.•.[.;. 

•  Until  that  dajr  comes,  I  shallmever  believe! this, boasted  point  to 
be ;  any  thing  more  than  a  coriventional  fiction;  a  pageant  got' up 
betwixt  the  sexes,  inva  certain  rank,  and  at  a  certain  time  of  lii&y 
in  which  both 'find  their  account  equally.  ','      t   i    ^^'     ■•.. 

'  I  shall  be  even  disposed  to  rank  it  among  the  salutary  fictions 
of  life,  ivhen  in  polite  circles  I  shall  see  the  same  attentions  paid 
to  age  as  to  youth,  to  homely  features  as  to  handsome,  to  coarse 
ftomplexions  as  to  clear—- to  the  womany  as  she  is  a  woman,  not  as 
she  is  a  beauty,  a  fortune,  or  a  title. 

-I  shall  believe  it  to  be  something  itiore  than  a  name,^  when  a 
Well-dreSsed  gentleman  in  a  welUdressed  company  can -ad  vert  to 
the  topic  of  female  old  age  without  exciting,  and  intending  to  excit^> 
it^sneer  :— "wheiii  the  phrases  ^^antiquated  virginity,^'  i  and  such  a 
®ne  has  *'overstood  herimarket,"  pronounced  in  gpod  companyy 
^all  rai«e  immediate ' offence  in  man,  or  woman,  that  shall. hear 
them  spoken;       '       •  '     i    i-.  ...•      n-        :    <,-,<> 

"  -  Joseph f  Paice,  of  Bread-street-hill,  merchant,  and  one  o£  theDl* 
rectors  of  the' South-Sea  company- — the  same  to  whom-  Edwsards^ 
the  Shakspeare  commentator,  has  addressed  a  fine  sonnetr— was 
the  only  pattern  of  consistent-  gallantry  I  have'  met  i with.  •  He 
tdok  me  under  his  shelter  at  an  early  age,  and  bestowed  some 
perins  upo(n  meJ  Lowe  to  his  precepts  and  example  whatever 
there  is  of 'the  mam  of  business  (and  that  is  iK)t  much)  in  my  com^ 
position.  It  was  not  his  fault  that  1  did  not  profit  more^  Though 
bred  U  Presbyterian,  and  brought  up  a  merchant,  he  was  the 
finest  gentleman  of  his  time.  He  had  not  one  system' of  attention 
to  females  in  thedrawinrg-room,  and  another  in  the  shop^'or-atthe 
stall.  I  do  not  mean:  that  he  made  no  distinction.-  But  he  neve? 
lofet  sight  df'feex,  or  overlooked  it*  in  the  casualties  of  a  disadvan* 
tageous  situation.     I  have  seen  him  stand  bareheaded— smile  ifi 


110  ELI  A. 


r 


you  please — to  a  poor  servant  girl,  while  she  has  been  inquiring 
of  him  the  way  to  some  street — in  such  a  posture  of  unforced 
civility,  as  neither  to  embarrass  her  in  the  acceptance,  nor  him- 
self in  the  offer,  of  it.  He  was  no  dangler,  in  the  common  accep- 
tation of  the  word,  after  women  ;  but  he  reverenced  and  upheld, 
in  every  form  in  which  it  came  before  him,  womanhood.  I  have 
seen  him — nay,  smile  not — tenderly  escorting  a  market-woman, 
whom  he  had  encountered  in  a  shower,  exalting  his  umbrella 
over  her  poor  basket  of  fruit,  that  it  might  receive  no  damage, 
with  as  much  carefulness  as  if  she  had  been  a  Countess.  To  the 
reverend  form  of  Female  Eld  he  would  yield  the  wall  (though  it 
were  to  an  ancient  beggar-woman)  with  more  ceremony  than  we 
can  afford  to  show  our  grandams.  He  was  the  Preux  Chevalier 
of  Age ;  the  Sir  Calidore,  or  Sir  Tristan,  to  those  who  have  no 
Calidores  or  Tristans  to  defend  them.  The  roses,  that  had  long 
faded  thence,  still  bloomed  for  him  in  those  withered  and  yellow 
cheeks. 

He  was  never  married,  but  in  his  youth  he  paid  his  addresses 
to  the  beautiful  Susan  Winstanley — old  Winstanley's  daughter 
of  Clapton — who  dying  in  the  early  days  of  their  courtship,  con- 
firmed in  him  the  resolution  of  perpetual  bachelorship.  It  was 
during  their  short  courtship,  he  told  me,  that  he  had  been  one  day 
treating  his  mistress  with  a  profusion  of  civil  speeches — the  com- 
mon gallantries — to  which  kind  of  thing  she  had  hitherto  mani- 
fested no  repugnance — but  in  this  instance  with  no  effect.  He 
could  not  obtain  from  her  a  decent  acknowledgment  in  return. 
She  rather  seemed  to  resent  his  compliments.  He  could  not  set 
it  down  to  caprice,  for  the  lady  had  always  shown  herself  above 
that  littleness.  When  he  ventured  on  the  following  day,  finding 
her  a  little  better  humored,  to  expostulate  with  her  on  her  cold- 
ness of  yesterday,  she  confessed,  with  her  usual  frankness,  that 
she  had  no  sort  of  dislike  to  his  attentions  ;  that  she  could  even 
endure  some  high-flown  compliments ;  that  a  young  woman  placed 
in  her  situation  had  a  right  to  expect  all  sort  of  civil  things  said 
to  her  ;  that  she.  hoped  she  could  digest  a  dose  of  adulation,  short 
of  insincerity,  with  as  little  injury  to  her  humility  as  most  young 
women  :  but  that — a  little  before  he  had  commenced  his  compli- 
ments— she  had  overheard  him  by  accident,  in  rather  rough  lan- 


i^. 


MODERN  GALLANTRY.  lU 

guage,  rating  a  young  woman,  who  had  not  brought  home  his 
cravats  quite  at  the  appointed  time,  and  she  thought  to  herself, 
"  As  I  am  Miss  Susan  Winstanley,  and  a  young  lady — a  reputed 
beauty,  and  known  to  be  a  fortune, — I  can  have  my  choice  of  the 
finest  speeches  from  the  mouth  of  this  very  fine  gentleman  who  is 
courting  me — but  if  I  had  been  poor  Mary  Such-a-one  {naming  the 
milliner), — and  had  failed  of  bringing  home  the  cravats  to  the  ap- 
pointed hour — though  perhaps  I  had  sat  up  half  the  night  to  for- 
ward them — what  sort  of  compliments  should  I  have  received 
then  ? — And  my  woman's  pride  came  to  my  assistance ;  and  I 
thought,  that  if  it  were  only  to  do  me  honor,  a  female,  like  myself, 
miglit  have  received  handsomer  usage  :  and  I  was  determined  not 
to  accept  aj?y  fine  speeches,  to  the  compromise  of  that  sex,  the 
belonging  to  which  was  after  all  my  strongest  claim  and  title  to 
them." 

I  think  the  lady  discovered  both  generosity,  and  a  just  way  of 
thinking,  in  this  rebuke  which  she  gave  her  lover ;  and  I  have 
sometimes  imagined,  that  the  uncommon  strain  of  courtesy,  which 
through  life  regulated  the  actions  and  behavior  of  my  friend  to- 
wards all  of  womankind  indiscriminately,  owed  its  happy  origin 
to  this  seasonable  lesson  from  the  lips  of  his  lamented  mistress. 

I  wish  the  whole  female  world  would  entertain  the  same  notion 
of  these  things  that  Miss  Winstanley  showed.  Then  we  should 
see  something  of  the  spirit  of  consistent  gallantry  ;  and  no  longer 
witness  the  anomaly  of  the  same  man — a  pattern  of  true  polite- 
ness to  a  wife — of  cold  contempt,  or  rudeness,  to  a  sister — the 
idolater  of  his  female  mistress — the  disparager  and  despiser  of  his 
no  less  female  aunt,  or  unfortunate — still  female — maiden  cousin. 
Just  so  much  respect  as  a  woman  derogates  from  her  own  sex,  in 
whatever  condition  placed — her  handmaid,  or  dependent — she  de- 
serves to  have  diminished  from  herself  on  that  score  ;  and  proba- 
bly will  feel  the  diminution,  when  youth,  and  beauty,  and  advan- 
tages, not  inseparable  from  sex,  shall  lose  of  their  attraction. 
What  a  woman  should  demand  of  a  man  in  courtship,  or  after  it, 
is  first — respect  for  her  as  she  is  a  woman ; — and  next  to  that — 
to  be  respected  by  him  above  all  other  women.  But  let  her  stand 
upon  her  female  character  as  upon  a  foundation  ;  and  let  the  at- 


A 


lia  ELIA. 

tentions,  incident  to  individual  preference,  be  so  many  pretty  ad- 
ditaments  and  ornament&r— as  many,  an4  as  fanciful,  as  you  please 
— to  that  main  structure.     Let  her  first  lesson  be  with  sweet  Susan 

Winstanley— taTev6Wwe6  Aer.  5ea?.  Mtir  r    1  Ti^  •     '  '  •<      .-   . 

.-i  ;k"'J  .  ::    'li'MUMi  •    :>-;•  -  jiiv    ,o:"-  j:    O'Jin.";  ",n  o-u  J  ;   '::'>.■>!  k  i/'.-i-^ 

<ij  >(i  ;  oi  >;!j  vcj  r -fjjf   ijjjo  ^  --.!Hftn'«  -  ;    -^il  <,;  fi //f  :/;  ;..»..    ^'I^/t'v^ 

''■?i  QJ  I'.yj:'-  *'!;  X'H  1  -j5i  j<;<  .Oii  i  ni'\i  I'.r,  'yun  •-•■.iw  v«fM-'v,Mi 
*'-'■.  i'.rj?'i  rvit:*  t  d  i  nrv.  ■.•/>»'I1'.h 'r'c.->  'o  ri' i  iff '<—  m-MiJ  on;" 
.<  '»  J  ;  ■  ymU  h'.i  y"\  oj  ftTi'*  ')  ;  ^M'  ,  -  I'^nuov,  /{>  iu\  ,—■■■'  utrr 
.!i  !>7n    ^'/ >     '^''jf')   t  '?  .H;jiOf.  ^vn   )t»    -J  ^m;     :»'.'' '^•3i 'jv  i.*»r«  .^triivrri I 


■'   ,  ;;  V    '  ■<,       '•!  •         ;:y<.i':    firiu  rioc  iJt '^i''^  C'it't?!    ,      '        '  i 

■"Mi  yi'.r   >.  roil   o^/iii  c^iKi  <  vmIv^    »>iii-Jv\   i-xju  ;:  ,u;  »'!i  i'^^ 
(>•/?••  .'o:  m;  (iU  i*i^    i(>  ;!fr!(  mH   ^mv  :  >«!;  ;.of  'r-ii^r;'.  i'ji»  jjoif  e<; 
-(•j  vc  1  <E  v<  '  1(  'f'jv. :-,;'>.»  wMi  ■'>'.>■  itiv.  y\\  r'>:  iiii;.'Vi   Vit:    ui^v  >• 
nijiiicj  /ti'.- Kf  li.    -■•''.)    /  !'i  yiiiiunjiibr     t>v   hjm  'if  jo  ]  4  .'■■>'?    -•^ 

.lodoa  Jtiif?.  oi'    ?i!.R 'iM  a-,  .tiuov   uncv    :» .     -;  t  jfioav*  •  <i/  :  vjv/  ; 
/);..••••■■'■' !?'^^    1'.  ff       ,i''3-«ron-    vt  .UJiKUfr'.     /k     ?n-  ^--jit"  j    .:>f  »»  kj 
•t^'i  'f;ii-ij/i«i  jiK)  '•  'A">  <  n)  nun    ■•;!::,  u)  :j:ji  iiv  un^  -';;' 

-   .WlJf    M    .i   ,\'   U^mSjJS   rll.'Jii- /     j:f  !V»     -|«j;   l,v»?i  *Vt    2m  Vd'f'l   .vU'    vi-: 

•  I'Oi}:.  T'  f :    J  O;?-'  jp^fwM    J!'.';:    .    ;):#   ^j/oT    ^-Hi'ii  HO  Jfc'ii   jou     -^aM:;- 


THE  OLD  BENCHERS  OF  THE  INNER  TEMPLE.  113 


'()[  ;  tv 


THE  plDBENCHEES  OP  THE  INNER  TEMPIB;  ■•'^ 

'jOC  ji!r>7  or»:.i;  w:iii  "MIi  !■   ^^/ijuj^u   .U'lf  iis  5/?'-  '  •••  • 

I'jift  ft?.j.v/  ^^';-7  'Ot>  "U  .'-tno  :-•.  .«n  .'•/(;    .of^m  i  -k. 

I . TjVA^  ^)orn, , ,  a.n^  passed  the  first  seven  ye^rs,  of.  my  life, ,  in  th^,  t 
Temple.  Its  church,  its  halls,  its  gardens,  its  fountain,  its  i:iver, 
I  had  almost  said — for  in  those  young  years,  what  was  this  king 
of  rivers  to  me,  jbut  a  stream  that  watered  pui;.  plea^nt  places  ? — 
these  are  of  my  oldest  recollections.  I  repeat,  to  this  day,  no 
verses  to  myself  more  frequently,  or  with  kindlier  emotion,  than 
those  of  Spenser,  where  he  speaks  of  this  spot. 


~fi'.:j:. 


^There  when  they  came,  whereas  those  bricky  towers,  .  , ,  , 
.    The  which  on  Themmes  brode  aged  back  doth  ride, 
Where  how  the  studious  lawyers  have  their  bowers, 

•"  - '  ''    '-There  whylome  wont  the  Temi)l'er  knights  to  Bide,  "^^  ' '^^^'' 

''/n  I  rl    Till  they  decayed  through  pride.            :.!'  Im-.   '.»  ;   '/j  l.-S  .!i  :.'JJ 

V     •    >  •      ;              ■    !    ■•  ). .,..,,       •            y.  a;  ,     .  -A'-Myi  \'\ 

Indeed,  it  is  the  most  elegant  spot  in  the  metropolis.  What  at 
transition  for  a  countryman  visiting  London  for  the  first  time — n 
the  passing  from  the  crowded  Strand  or  Fleet-street,  by  unexpected 
avenues,  into  its  magnificent  ample  squares,  its  classic  green  re- 
cesses !  What  a  cheerful,;  liberal  look  hath  that  part  of  it,  which, 
from  three  sides^  overlooks  the  greater  garden ;  that  goodly  pile  ■ 

,.i.  J,.Jo^v^.^      ^^^Hildings^ng,.albeiJ;of.P^h^  '' [^^,   ,,;^^^.,,, 

confronting  with  massy  contrast,  the  lighter,  older,  irtfiore'farif as- 
ticdlly  shrouded  one,  named  of  Haffcourt,  A^)^ith  tlie  cheerful  Crbwn- 
office  Row  (plkce  of  m)/'' kindly  erigertdure),  right  opposite 'the 
stately  stream,  which  washes  the  garden-foot' with  her  yet  scarcely 
trade-polluted' waters,  and  sterns  Biit  just  weaned  frorh  her 
Twickenham  Naiades !  a  man  would  give  something  to  have 
been  born  in  such  places^    '  What  a  collegiate  aspect  has  that  fine 

PART    I.  9 


114  ELIA.  -^'%> 

Klizabethan  hall,  where  the  fountain  plays,  which  I  have  made 
lo  rise  and  fall,  how  many  times !  to  the  astoundment  of  the  young 
urchins,  my  contemporaries,  who,  not  being  able  to  guess  at  its 
recondite  machinery,  were  almost  tempted  to  hail  the  wondrous 
work  as  magic  !  What  an  antique  air  had  the  now  almost  effaced 
sun-dials,  with  their  moral  inscriptions,  seeming  coevals  with  that 
Time  which  they  measured,  and  to  take  their  revelations  of  its 
flight  immediately  from  heaven,  holding  correspondence  with  the 
fountain  of  light !  How  would  the  dark  line  steal  imperceptibly 
on,  watched  by  the  eye  of  childhood,  eager  to  detect  its  movement, 
never  catched,  nice  as  an  evanescent  cloud,  or  the  first  arrests 
of  sleep  ! 

Ah  !  yet  doth  beauty  like  a  dial-hand 

Steal  from  his  figure,  and  no  pace  perceived ! 

What  a  dead  thing  is  a  clock,  with  its  ponderous  embowelments 
of  lead  and  brass,  its  pert  or  solemn  dulness  of  communication, 
compared  with  the  simple  altar-like  structure,  and  silent  heart- 
language  of  the  old  dial !  It  stood  as  the  garden  god  of  Christian 
gardens.  Why  is  it  almost  everywhere  vanished  ?  If  its  busi- 
ness-use be  superseded  by  more  elaborate  inventions,  its  moral 
uses,  its  beauty,  might  have  pleaded  for  its  continuance.  It  spoke 
of  moderate  labors,  of  pleasures  not  protracted  after  sun-set,  of 
temperance,  and  good  hours.  It  was  the  primitive  clock,  the 
horologue  of  the  first  world.  Adam  could  scarce  have  missed  it  in 
Paradise.  It  was  the  measure  appropriate  for  sweet  plants  and 
flowers  to  spring  by,  for  the  birds  to  apportion  their  silver  warb- 
lings  by,  for  flocks  to  pasture  and  be  led  to  fold  by.  The  shepherd 
"  carved  it  out  quaintly  in  the  sun  ;"  and,  turning  philosopher  by 
the  very  occupation,  provided  it  with  mottoes  more  touching  than 
tombstones.  It  was  a  pretty  device  of  the  gardener,  recorded  by 
Marvell,  who,  in  the  days  of  artificial  gardening,  made  a  dial  out 
of  herbs  and  ilowers.  I  must  quote  his  verses  a  little  higher  up, 
for  they  are  full,  as  all  his  serious  poetry  was,  of  a  witty  delicacy. 
They  will  not  come  in  awkwardly,  I  hope,  in  a  talk  of  fountains 
and  sun-dials.     He  is  speaking  of  sweet  garden  scenes  : — 

What  wondrous  life  is  this  I  lead  ! 
Ripe  apples  drop  about  my  head. 


If 


THE  OLD  BENCHERS  OF  THE  INNER  TEMPLE.  115 

The  luscious  clusters  of  the  vine 

Upon  my  mouth  do  crush  their  wine. 

The  nectarine,  and  curious  peach, 

Into  my  hands  themselves  do  reach. 

Stumbling  on  melons,  as  I  pass, 

Insnared  with  flowers,  I  fall  on  gras^. 

Meanwhile  the  mind  from  pleasure  less 

Withdraws  into  its  happiness. 

The  mind,  that  ocean,  where  each  kind 

Does  straight  its  own  resemblance  find  ; 

Yet  it  creates,  transcending  these, 

Far  other  worlds,  and  other  seas ; 

Annihilating  all  that's  made 

To  a  green  thought  in  a  green  shade. 

Here  at  the  fountain's  sliding  foot, 

Or  at  some  fruit-tree's  mossy  root. 

Casting  the  body's  vest  aside, 

My  soul  into  the  boughs  does  glide  ; 

There,  like  a  bird,  it  sits  and  sings. 

Then  wets  and  claps  its  silver  wings. 

And,  till  prepared  for  longer  flight,  *' 

Waves  in  its  plumes  the  various  light. 

How  well  the  skilful  gardener  drew. 

Of  flowers  and  herbs,  this  dial  new  ! 

Where,  from  above,  the  milder  sun 

Does  through  a  fragrant  zodiac  run  : 

And,  as  it  works,  the  industrious  bee 

Computes  its  time  as  well  as  we. 

How  could  such  sweet  and  wholesome  hours 

Be  reckon'd,  but  with  herbs  and  flowers  ?* 

The  artificial  fountains  of  the  metropolis  are,  in  like  manner, 
fast  vanishing. .  Most  of  them  are  dried  up,  or  bricked  over.  Yet, 
where  one  is  left,  as  in  that  little  green  nook  behind  the  South- 
Sea  House,  what  a  freshness  it  gives  to  the  dreary  pile !  Four 
little  winged  marble  boys  used  to  play  their  virgin  fancies,  spout- 
ing out  ever  fresh  streams  from  their  innocent-wanton  lips  in  the 
§  square  of  Lincoln's  Inn,  when  I  was  no  bigger  than  they  were 
figured.  They  are  gone,  and  the  spring  choked  up.  The  fashion, 
they  tell  me,  is  gone  by,  and  these  things  are  esteemed  childish. 
Why  not  then  gratify  children  by  letting  them  stand  ?  Lawyers, 
I  suppose,  were  children  once.     They  are  awakening  images  to 

*  From  a  copy  of  verses  entitled  The  Garden. 


116  ELI  A. 

them  at  least.  Why  must  everything  smack  of  man  and  mannish  ? 
Is  the  world  all  grown  up  ?  Is  childhood  dead  ?  Or  is  there  not 
in  the  bosoms  of  the  wisest  and  the  best  some  of  the  child's  heart 
left,  to  respond  to  its  earliest  enchantments  ?  The  figures  were 
grotesque.  Are  the  stiff- wigged  living  figures,  that  still  flitter 
and  chatter  about  that  area,  less  Gothic  in  appearance  ?  or  is  the 
splutter  of  their  hot  rhetoric  one-half  so  refreshing  and  innocent 
as  the  little  cool  playful  streams  those  exploded  cherubs  uttered  ? 

They  have  lately  gothicised  the  entrance  to  the  Inner  Temple- 
hall,  and  the  library  front ;  to  assimilate  them,  I  suppose,  to  the 
body  of  the  hall,  which  they  do  not  at  all  resemble.  What  is 
become  of  the  winged  horse  that  stood  over  the  former  ?  a  stately 
arms  !  and  who  has  removed  those  frescoes  of  the  Virtues,  which 
Italianized  the  end  of  the  Paper-buildings  ? — my  first  hint  of  alle- 
gory !  They  must  account  to  me  for  these  things,  which  I  miss 
so  greatly. 

The  terrace  is,  indeed,  left,  which  we  used  to  call  the  parade  ; 
but  the  traces  are  passed  away  of  the  footsteps  which  made  its 
pavement  awful !  It  is  become  common  and  profane.  The  old 
benchers  had  it  almost  sacred  to  themselves,  in  the  forepart  of  the 
day  at  least.  They  might  not  be  sided  or  jostled.  Their  air 
and  dress  asserted  the  parade.  You  left  wide  spaces  betwixt 
you,  when  you  passed  them.     We  walk  on  even  terms  with  their 

successors.     The   rogueish  'eye  of  J 11,  ever  ready   to  be 

delivered  of  a  jest,  almost  invites  a  stranger  to  vie  a  repartee 
with  it.  But  what  insolent  familiar  durst  have  mated  Thomas 
Coventry? — whose  person  was  a  quadrate,  his  step  massy  and 
elephantine,  his  face  square  as  thei  lion's,  his  gait  peremptory  and 
path-keeping,  indivertible  from  his  way  as  a  moving  column,  the 
scarecrow  of  his  inferiors,  the  brow-beater  of  equals  and  supe- 
riors, who  made  a  solitude  of  bHildren  wherever  he  game,  for  they 
fled  His  insufferable  presence,  as  they  would  have  shunned  an 
Elisha  bear.  His  growl  was  as  thunder  in  their  ears,  whether  he 
spake  to  them  ifi  mirth  or  in  rebuke,  his  invitator)'^  notes  bein^, 
indeed,  of  alii  the  most  repulsive  and  horrid.  Cloud,s  of  sniiff, 
aggravating  the  natural  terrors  of  his  speech,  broke  from  each 
ihajestic  nostril,  darkening  the  air.  He  tC)ok  it,  not  by  pinches, 
but  a  palmful  at  once,  diving  for  it  under  the  migl"*Y  flaps  of  hia 


THE  OLD  BENCHERS  OF  TtlE  INNER  TEMPLE.  117 


oldffashioned  waistcoat  pocket  •; '  his  waistcoat  red  and  angry,*  '■  his 
coat  dark  rappee,  tinctured  by  dye  original j  and  by  adjuncts,  with' 
buttons  of  obsolete  gold.  Arid  so  he  paced  the  terrace*  '  '  '  ' '. 
"By  hi^  side  a  milder  form  wais  sometimes  to  be'seten  ;  the  pen-  ■ 
sive  gentility  of  Samuel  Salt.  They  were  coevals,  and  had' 
nothing  but  that  and  their  benchership  •  in  common.  In  politick 
Salt  was -a  whig,  and  Coventry  a  staunch  tory.  Many  a  sarcastic- 
growl  did  the  latter  cast  out — ^for  Coventry  had  a  rough  spinous  i 
humor — at  the  political  confederates  of  his  associate,  which  re- 
bounded ;  from  the  gentle  bosom  of  the  latter  like  cannon-balls 
from  wool.  You  could  not  ruffle  Samuel  Salt.  -  "  .  •.  i  ..  un 
■S.  had  the  reputation  of  being  a  very  clever  man,  and  of  excel- 
lent discernment  4n  the  chamber  practice  of  the  law;  I  suspect 
his  knowledge  did  not  amount  to  much.  Wh^n  a  case  of  difficult 
disposition  of  mdhey,  testamentary  or  otherwise,  came  before  him,' 
he  ordinarily  handed  it  over  with  a  few  instructions  to  his  man 
Level,  who  was  a  quick  little  fellow,  and'  would  d6spatch  it  out 
of 'hand  by  the  light  of  natural  understanding,  of  which  he  had 
an  Uncommon  share.  '  It' was  incredible  what  repute  for  talents' 
S.  enjoyed  by  the  mere  trick  of  gravity.  He  was  a.  shy  man  ;  a 
child  might  pose  him  in  a  minute — rindolent'  andi  procrastinating 
to  the  last  degree;  Yet  men  would  give  him  credit  for  vast  ap- 
plication, in  spite  of  himself.  He  was  not  to  be  trusted  with  himi* 
self  with  impunity.  He  never  dressed  for  a  dinner  party  but  he 
forgot  his  sword — ^they  wore  i  swords  then-;— or  some  other  neces- 
sary part  of  his  equipage.  Lovel  had  his  eye  upon  him. on;  all 
these  occasions,  and.  ordinarily  gave  him  .his  cue.  If  there  was 
anything  which  he  could  s|l6ak  unseasonably,  he  was  sure  to.  do 
it.-^Hewas  to  dine  at  a  relative's  of  the  unfortunate  MissiBlandy' 
on  the  day  of  her  execution; — «,nd  L.,>who  had  a  wary  foresight 
of -his  probable  hallucinations,  before  he  set  outy  schooled  hinn 
with  great  anxiety  not  in  any  possible  manner  to  allude  to  her 
story  that  day.  S.  promised  faithfully  to  observe  the  injunction. 
He  had  not  been  seated  in  the  parlor,  where  the  company  was 
expecting  the  dinner  summons,  four  minuteSj  when,  a  pause  in 
the  conversation  ensuing,  he  got  up,  looked  out  of  window,  and 
pulling  down  his  ruffles — an  ordinary  motion  with  him — observed, 
"  it  was  a  gloomy  day,"  and  added,  "  Miss  Blandy  must  be  hanged 


k 


118  ELI  A. 

by  this  time,  I  suppose."  Instances  of  this  sort  were  perpetual. 
Yet  S.  was  thought  by  some  of  the  greatest  men  of  his  time  a  fit 
person  to  be  consulted,  not  alone  in  matters  pertaining  to  the  law, 
but  in  the  ordinary  niceties  and  embarrassments  of  conduct — from 
force  of  manner  entirely.  He  never  laughed.  He  had  the  same 
good  fortune  among  the  female  world, — was  a  known  toast  with 
the  ladies,  and  one  or  two  are  said  to  have  died  for  love  of  him — 
I  suppose,  because  he  never  trifled  or  talked  gallantry  with  them, 
or  paid  them,  indeed,  hardly  common  attentions.  He  had  a  fine 
face  and  person,  but  wanted,  methought,  the  spirit  that  should 
have  shown  them  off  with  advantage  to  the  women.  His  eye 
lacked  lustre. — Not  so,  thought  Susan  P ;  who,  at  the  ad- 
vanced age  of  sixty,  was  seen,  in  the  cold  evening  time,  unaccom- 
panied, wetting  the  pavement  of  B d  Row,  with  tears  that  fell 

in  drops  which  might  be  heard,  because  her  frieriti  had  died  that 
day — he,  whom  she  had  pursued  with  a  hopeless  passion  for  the 
last  forty  years — a  passion,  which  years  could  not  extinguish  or 
abate  ;  nor  the  long-resolved,  yet  gently-enforced,  puttings  off  of 
unrelenting  bachelorhood  dissuade   from  its  cherished  purpose. 

Mild  Susan  P ,  thou  hast  now  thy  friend  in  heaven ! 

Thomas  Coventry  was  a  cadet  of  the  noble  family  of  that  name. 
He  passed  his  youth  in  contracted  circumstances,  which  gave  him 
early  those  parsimonious  habits  which  in  after-life  never  forsook 
him ;  so  that,  with  one  windfall  or  another,  about  the  time  I  knew 
him  he  was  master  of  four  or  five  hundred  thousand  pounds ;  nor 
did  he  look,  or  walk,  worth  a  moidore  less.  He  lived  in  a  gloomy 
house  opposite  the  pump  in  Serjeant's-inn,  Fleet-street.  J.,  the 
counsel,  is  doing  self-imposed  penarilfe  in  it,  for  what  reason  I 
divine  not,  at  this  day.  C.  had  an  agreeable  seat  at  North  Cray, 
where  he  seldom  spent  above  a  day  or  two  at  a  time  in  the  sum- 
mer ;  but  preferred,  during  the  hot  months,  standing  at  his  win- 
dow in  this  damp,  close,  well-like  mansion,  to  watch,  as  he  said, 
"  the  maids  drawing  water  all  day  long."  I  suspect  he  had  his 
within-door  reasons  for  the  preference.  Hie  currus  et  armafuere. 
He  might  think  his  treasures  more  safe.  His  house  had  the 
aspect  of  a  strong-box.  C.  was  a  close  hunks — a  hoarder  rather 
than  a  miser — or,  if  a  miser,  none  of  the  mad  Elwes  breed,  who 
have  brought  discredit  upon  a  character,  which  cannot  exist  with- 


THE  OLD  BENCHERS  OF  THE  INNER  TEMPLE.  119 

out  certain  admirable  points  of  steadiness  and  unity  of  purpose. 
One  may  hate  a  true  miser,  but  cannot,  I  suspect,  so  easily  de- 
spise him.  By  taking  care  of  the  pence,  he  is  often  enabled  to 
part  with  the  pounds,  upon  a  scale  that  leaves  us  careless  gene- 
rous fellows,  halting  at  an  immeasurable  distance  behind.  C.  gave 
away  30,000Z.  at  once  in  his  life-time  to  a  blind  charity.  His 
housekeeping  was  severely  looked  after,  but  he  kept  the  table  of 
a  gentleman.  He  would  know  who  came  in  and  who  went  out  of 
his  house,  but  his  kitchen  chimney  was  never  suffered  to  freeze. 

Salt  was  his  opposite  in  this,  as  in  all — never  knew  what  he 
was  worth  in  the  world ;  and  having  but  a  competency  for  his 
rank,  which  his  indolent  habits  were  little  calculated  to  improve, 
might  have  suffered  severely  if  he  had  not  had  honest  people 
about  him.  Level  took  care  of  everything.  He  was  at  once  his 
clerk,  his  good  servant,  his  dresser,  his  friend,  his  "  flapper,"  his 
guide,  stop-watch,  auditor,  treasurer.  He  did  nothing  without 
consulting  Level,  or  failed  in  anything  without  expecting  and 
fearing  his  admonishing.  He  put  himself  almost  too  much  in  his 
hands,  had  they  not  been  the  purest  in  the  world.  He  resigned 
his  title  almost  to  respect  as  a  master,  if  L.  could  ever  have  for- 
gotten for  a  moment  that  he  was  a  servant. 

I  knew  this  Level.  He  was  a  man  of  an  incorrigible  and 
losing  honesty.  A  good  fellow,  withal,  and  "would  strike."  In 
the  cause  of  the  oppressed  he  never  considered  inequalities,  oi 
calculated  the  number  of  his  opponents.  He  once  wrested  a  sword 
out  of  the  hand  of  a  man  of  quality  that  had  drawn  upon  him ; 
and  pommelled  him  severely  with  the  hilt  of  it.  The  swordsman 
had  offered  insult  to  a  female — an  occasion  upon  which  no  odds 
against  him  could  have  prevented  the  interference  of  Level.  He 
would  stand  next  day  bareheaded  to  the  same  person,  modestly 
to  excuse  his  interference — for  L.  never  forgot  rank,  where  some- 
thing better  was  not  concerned.  L.  was  the  liveliest  little  fellow 
breathing,  haJ  a  face  as  gay  as  Garrick's,  whom  he  was  said 
greatly  to  resemble  (I  have  a  portrait  of  him  which  confirms  it), 
possessed  a  fine  turn  for  humorous  poetry — next  to  Swift  and 
Prior — moulded  heads  in  clay  or  plaster  of  Paris  to  admiration, 
by  the  dint  of  natural  genius  merely ;  turne'd  cribbage  boards, 
and  such  small  cabinet  toys,  to  perfection ;  took  a  hand  at  qua- 


120  ELIA.        • 

drille  or  bowls  with  .equal .  facility ,;  made  punch  better  than  any 
man  of, his  degree  im  England,;  had  the, merriest  quips  and; con- 
ceits ;  and  was ; altogether  as  bjimful  of  rogueries^and  invsentions. 
as  you  could  desire.  He  was  a  brother  of  the  angle,  moreover,: 
and  just  such,  a  free,  hearty,, honest  companion  as  Mr.  Izaak  Wal- 
ton would  have  chosen  to  go  a  fishing,  with.  I  saw  him  in  his 
old  age  and  the  decay  of  his  faculties,  palsy-smitten,  in  the/last. sad 
stage  of  human  weakness— «"  a  .remnant  most  forlorn  of  what  he 
was,"r-^yet  even  then  his :  eye  would  light  up  upon  the  mention 
of  his  favorite  Garrick.  He  was.  greatest,  he  i would,  say^  in 
Bayes- — "was  upon  the  stage  nearly. throughout,  the  whole  per- 
formance, and  as  busy  as  a  bee."  .  At  intervals,  too,  he  would 
speak  of  his  iformer  life,  and  how  he  came  .up  a  little,  boy  from 
Lincoln  to  go  to.  service,  and ,  how  his ,  mother  cried  at  parting 
with  him,  and  how  he  returned,  after  some  few  years' absence, 
in  his  smart  new  livery,  to  see  her,  and  she  blessed, herself  atthf 
change,  and.  could  hardly  be  brought  to  believe  that, it  was  "  he 
own  bairn."  And  then,  the  excitement  subsiding,  he  would  weep, 
till  I  have  wished  that  sad  second-childhood  might  havc/a  mother 
still  to  lay  his  head  upon  her  lap*. .  ,But  the  common  mother  of  us 
all  in  no  long  time  after. received  him  gently  into  hers*  v..  ::  >.  > 
■'  Withf  Coventry, i  and  with  Salt,  in.  their)  walks  i  upon  the  ter- 
race, most  commonly  Pesber  Pierson  would  join  to  make  up  a  third* 
They  did  not  walk  linked  arm,  in  arm  in.  those  days— '^ as. now. 
our  stout  triumviTS' sweep  the  streets,"- — ibut  generally  with  both 
hinds  'folded  behind  them  for  state,  or  with  one  at  least:  behind, 
the  other  carrying  a  cane.  P.  was  a  benevolent,  but  not  a  pre^ 
possessing  man ; ; ;  He  had  that. .  in  .his  ,  face  which  you  .  could 
nbt  terni  unhappiness;  it  rather  implied  an  incapaijity  of  being 
happy <  '  His  cheeks  were,  colorless /even  Xo  whiteness.  His  look 
was  uninviting,  resembling  (but, without. his  sourness) -that ;Qf  our 
great  philanthropist.  I  know.thatihe  did  good  acts,  but  I.  could 
never  make  out  what  he  was k^  Gontemporao  with  these,  but 
subordinate,  was  Daines  Barrington- — another  pddity — ^he  walked 
burly  and  square- — in  imitation,  I  think,  of  .Coventry— hpwbeit 
he  attained  not  to  the  dignity  of  his  prototype.  Nevertheless,  he 
did  pretty  well,  upon  the  strength  of  being  a  tolerable  antiquarian, 
and  having  a  brother  a  bishop.     When  the  account  of  his  year's 


THE  OLD  BENCHERS  OF  THE  INNER  TEMPLE.  121 

treasurership  came  to  be  audited,  the  following  singular  charge 
was  unanimously  disallowed  by  the  bench  :  "  Item,  disbursed  Mr. 
Allen,  the  gardener,  twenty  shillings,  for  stuff  to  poison  the  spar- 
rows, by  rny  orders."  Next  to  him  was  old  Barton — a  jolly  ne- 
gation, who  tx)k  upon  him  the  ordering  of  the  bills  of  fare  for 
the  parliament  chamber,  where  the  benchers  dine — answerino-  to 
the  combination  rooms  at  College — much  to  the  easement  of  his 
less  epicurean  brethren.  I  know  nothing  more  of  him. — Then 
Read,  and  Twopeny, — Read,  good-humored  and  personable — 
Twopeny,  good-humored,  but  thin,  and  felicitous  in  jests  upon 
his  own  figure.  If  T.  was  thin,  Wharry  was  attenuated  and 
fleeting.  Many  must  remember  him  (for  he  was  of  rather 
later  date)  and  his  singular  gait,  which  was  performed  by  three 
steps  and  a  jump  regularly  succeeding.  The  steps  were  little 
efforts,  like  that  of  a  child  beginning  to  walk ;  the  jump  com- 
paratively vigorous,  as  a  foot  to  an  inch.  Where  he  learned  this 
figure,  or  what  occasioned  it,  I  could  never  discover.  It  was 
neither  graceful  in  itself,  nor  seemed  to  answer  the  purpose  any 
better  than  common  walking.  The  extreme  tenuity  of  his  frame, 
I  suspect,  set  him  upon  it.  It  was  a  trial  of  poising.  Twopeny 
would  often  rally  him  upon  his  leanness,  and  hail  him  as  Brother 
Lusty  ;  but  W.  had  no  relish  of  a  joke.  His  features  were  spite- 
ful. I  have  heard  that  he  would  pinch  his  cat's  ears  extremely, 
when  anything  had  offended  him.  Jackson — the  omniscient  Jack- 
son  as  he  was  called — was  of  this  period.  He  had  the  reputa- 
tion of  possessing  more  multifarious  knowledge  than  any  man  of 
his  time.  He  was  the  Friar  Bacon  of  the  less  literate  portion  of 
the  Temple.  I  remember  a  pleasant  passage,  of  the  cook  apply- 
ing to  him,  with  much  formality  of  apology,  for  instructions  how 
to  write  down  edge  bone  of  beef  in  his  bill  of  commons.  He 
was  supposed  to  know,  if  any  man  in  the  world  did.  He  decided 
the  orthography  to  be — as  I  have  given  it — fortifying  his  author- 
ity with  such  anatomical  reasons  as  dismissed  the  manciple  (for 
the  time)  learned  and  happy.  Some  do  spell  it  yet,  perversely, 
aitch  bone,  from  a  fanciful  resemblance  between  its  shape  and 
that  of  the  aspirate  so  denominated,  I  had  almost  forgotten  Min- 
gay  with  the  iron  hand — but  he  was  somewhat  later.  He  had 
lost  his  right  hand  by  some  accident,  and  supplied  it  with  a  grap- 


122  ELIA. 

pling-hook,  which  he  wielded  with  a  tolerable  adroitness.  I  de 
tected  the  substitute,  before  I  was  old  enough  to  reason  whether 
it  were  artificial  or  not.  I  remember  the  astonishment  it  raised 
in  me.  He  was  a  blustering,  loud-talking  person  ;  and  I  recon- 
ciled the  phenomenon  to  my  ideas  as  an  emblem  of  power — 
somewhat  like  the  horns  in  the  forehead  of  Michael  Angelo's 
Moses.  Baron  Maseres,  who  walks  (or  did  till  very  lately)  in 
the  costume  of  the  reign  of  George  the  Second,  closes  my  imper- 
feet  recollections  of  the  old  benchers  of  the  Inner  Temple. 

Fantastic  forms,  whither  are  ye  fled  ?  Or,  if  the  like  of  you 
exist,  why  exist  they  no  more  for  me  ?  Ye  inexplicable,  half- 
understood  appearances,  why  comes  in  reason  to  tear  away  the 
preternatural  mist,  bright  or  gloomy,  that  enshrouded  you  ?  Why 
make  ye  so  sorry  a  figure  in  my  relation,  who  made  up  to  me — 
to  my  .childish  eyes — the  mythology  of  the  Temple  ?  In  those 
days  I  saw  Gods,  as  "  old  men  covered  with  a  mantle,"  walking 
upon  the  earth.  Let  the  dreams  of  classic  idolatry  perish, — ex- 
tinct  be  the  fairies  and  fairy  trumpery  of  legendary  fabling,  in 
the  heart  of  childhood,  there  will,  for  ever,  spring  up  a  well  of 
innocent  or  wholesome  superstition — the  seeds  of  exaggeration 
will  be  busy  there,  and  vital — from  every-day  forms  educing  the 
unknown  and  the  uncommon.  In  that  little  Goshen  there  will 
be  light,  when  the  grown  world  flounders  about  in  the  darkness 
of  sense  and  materiality.  While  childhood,  and  while  dreams, 
reducing  childhood,  shall  be  left,  imagination  shall  not  have 
spread  her  holy  wings  totally  to  fly  the  earth. 

P.  S. — I  have  done  injustice  to  the  soft  shade  of  Samuel  Salt. 
See  what  it  is  to  trust  to  imperfect  memory,  and  the  erring  notices 
of  childhood  !  Yet  I  protest  I  always  thought  that  he  had  been  a 
bachelor !  This  gentleman,  R.  N.  informs  me,  married  young, 
and  losing  his  lady  in  childbed,  within  the  first  year  of  their  union, 
fell  into  a  deep  melancholy,  from  the  effects  of  which,  probably, 
he  never  thoroughly  recovered.  In  whpt  a  new  light  does  this 
place  his  rejection  (O  call  it  by  a  gentler  name!)  of  mild  Susan 

P ,  unravelling  into  beauty  certain  peculiarities  of  this  very 

shy  and  retiring  character  ! — Henceforth  let  no  one  receive  the 
narratives  of  Elia  for  true  records !     Thoy  are,  in  truth,   but 


THE  OLD  BENCHERS  OF  THE  INNER  TEMPLE.  123 

shadows  of  fact — verisimilitudes,  not  verities — or  sitting  but  upon 
the  remote  edges  and  outskirts  of  history.  He  is  no  such  honest 
chronicler  as  R.  N.,  and  would  have  done  better  perhaps  to  have 
consulted  that  gentleman,  before  he  sent  these  incondite  reminis- 
cences to  press.  But  the  worthy  sub-treasurer — who  respects  his 
old  and  his  new  masters — would  but  have  been  puzzled  at  the  inde- 
corous liberties  of  Elia.  The  good  man  wots  not,  peradventure, 
of  the  license  which  Magazines  have  arrived  at  in  this  plain- 
speaking  age,  or  hardly  dreams  of  their  existence  beyond  the 
Gentleman's — his  furthest  monthly  excursions  in  this  nature  hav- 
ing been  long  confined  to  the  holy  ground  of  honest  Urban^s 
obituary.  May  it  be  long  before  his  own  name  shall  help  to 
swell  those  columns  of  unenvied  flattery  ! — Meantime,  O  ye  New 
Benchers  of  the  Inner  Temple,  cherish  him  kindly,  for  he  is  him- 
self the  kindliest  of  human  creatures.  Should  infirmities  over- 
take him — he  is  yet  in  green  and  vigorous  senility — make  allow- 
ances for  them,  remembering  that  "  ye  yourselves  are  old."  So 
may  the  Winged  Horse,  your  ancient  badge  and  cognisance,  still 
flourish  !  so  may  future  Hookers  and  Seldens  illustrate  your  church 
and  chambers !  so  may  the  sparrows,  in  default  of  more  melodious 
quiristers,  unpoisoned  hop  about  your  walks !  so  may  the  fresh- 
colored  and  cleanly  nursery-maid,  who,  by  leave,  airs  her  play- 
ful charge  in  your  stately  gardens,  drop  her  prettiest  blushing 
curtsy  as  ye  pass,  reductive  of  juvenescent  emotion !  so  may  the 
younkers  of  this  generation  eye  you,  pacing  your  stately  terrace, 
with  the  same  superstitious  veneration,  with  which  the  child  Elia 
gazed  on  the  Old  Worthies  that  solemnised  the  parade  before  ye ! 


124  ELIA. 


GRACE   BEFORE  MEAT 


The  custom  of  saying  grace  at  meals  had,  probably,  its  origin  in 
the  early  times  of  the  world,  and  the  hunter-state  of  man,  when 
dinners  were  precious  things,  and  a  full  meal  was  something 
more  than  a  common  blessing !  when  a  belly-full  was  a  wind- 
fall, and  looked  like  a  special  providence.  In  the  shouts  and  tri- 
umphal songs  with  which,  after  a  season  of  sharp  abstinence,  a 
lucky  booty  of  deer's  or  goat's  flesh  would  naturally  be  ushered 
home,  existed,  perhaps,  the  germ  of  the  modern  grace.  It  is  not 
otherwise  easy  to  be  understood,  why  the  blessing  of  food — ^the 
act  of  eating — should  have  had  a  particular  expression  of  thanks- 
giving annexed  to  it,  distinct  from  that  implied  and  silent  grati- 
tude with  which  we  are  expected  to  enter  upon  the  enjoyment  of 
the  many  other  various  gifts  and  good  things  of  existence. 

I  own  that  I  am  disposed  to  say  grace  upon  twenty  other 
occasions  in  the  course  of  the  day  besides  my  dinner.  I  want  a 
form  for  setting  out  upon  a  pleasant  walk,  for  a  moonlight  ram- 
ble, for  a  friendly  meeting,  or  a  solved  problem.  Why  have  we 
none  for  books,  those  spiritual  repasts — a  grace  before  Milton — a 
grace  before  Shakspeare — a  devotional  exercise  proper  to  be  said 
before  reading  the  Fairy  Queen  ? — but  the  received  ritual  having 
prescribed  these  forms  to  the  solitary  ceremony  of  manducation, 
I  shall  confine  my  observations  to  the  experience  which  I  have  had 
of  the  grace,  properly  so  called ;  commending  my  new  scheme 
for  extension  to  a  niche  in  the  grand  philosophical,  poetical,  and 
perchance  in  part  heretical,  liturgy,  now  compiling  by  my  friend 
Homo  Humanus,  for  the  use  of  a  certain  snug  congregation  of 
Utopian  Rabeloesian  Christians,  no  matter  where  assembled. 

The  form,  then,  of  the  benediction  before  eating  has  its  beauty 


GRACE  BEFORE  MEAT.  125 

at  a  poor  man's  table,  or  at  the  simple  and  unprovocative  repasts 
of  children.  It  is  here  that  the  grace  becomes  exceedingly  graceful. 
The  indigent  man,  who  hardly  knows  whether  he  shall  have  a 
meal  the  next  day  or  not,  sits  down  to  his  fare  with  a  present 
sense  of  the  blessing,  which  can  be  but  feebly  acted  by  the  rich, 
into  whose  minds  the  conception  of  wanting  a  dinner  could  never, 
but  by  some  extreme  theory,  have  entered.  The  proper  end  of 
food — the  animal  sustenance — is  barely  contemplated  by  them. 
.The  poor  man's  bread  is  his  daily  bread,  literally  his  bread  for 
the  day.     Their  courses  are  perennial. 

Again  the  plainest  diet  seems  the  fittest  to  be  preceded  by  the 
grace.  That  which  is  least  stimulative  to  appetite,  leaves  the 
mind  most  free  for  foreign  considerations.  A  man  may  feel 
thankful,  heartily  thankful,  over  a  dish  of  plain  mutton  with  tur- 
nips, and  have  leisure  to  reflect  upon  the  ordinance  and  institution 
of  eating ;  when  he  shall  confess  a  perturbation  of  mind,  incon- 
sistent with  the  purposes  of  the  grace,  at  the  presence  of  venison 
or  turtle.  When  I  have  sate  (a  rarus  hospes)  at  rich  men's  tables, 
with  the  savory  soup  and  messes  steaming  up  the  nostrils,  and 
moistening  the  lips  of  the  guests  with  desire  and  a  distracted 
choice,  I  have  felt  the  introduction  of  that  ceremony  to  be  unsea- 
sonable. With  the  ravenous  orgasm  upon  you,  it  seems  imper- 
tinent to  interpose  a  religious  sentiment.  It  is  a  confusion  of 
purpose  to  mutter  out  praises  from  a  mouth  that  waters.  The 
heats  of  epicurism  put  out  the  gentle  flame  of  devotion.  The 
incense  which  rises  round  is  pagan,  and  the  belly-god  intercepts 
it  for  his  own.  The  very  excess  of  tljf  provision  beyond  the 
needs,  takes  away  all  the  sense  of  proportion  between  the  end 
and  means.  The  giver  is  veiled  by  his  gifts.  You  are  startled 
at  the  injustice  of  returning  thanks — for  what  ? — for  having  too 
much,  while  so  many  starve.     It  is  to  paise  the  Gods  amiss. 

I  have  observed  this  awkwardness  felt,  scarce  consciously  per- 
haps, by  the  good  man  who  says  the  grace.  I  have  seen  it  in 
clergymen  and  others — a  sort  of  shame — a  sense  of  the  co-pre- 
sence of  circumstances  which  unhallow  the  blessing.  After  a 
devotional  tone  put  on  for  a  few  seconds,  how  rapidly  the  speaker 
will  fall  into  his  common  voice  I  helping  himself  or  his  neighbor, 
as  if  to  get  rid  of  some  uneasy  sensation  of  hypocrisy.     Not  that 


126  ELIA. 

the  good  man  was  a  hypocrite,  or  was  not  most  consei^'ntious  in 
the  discharge  of  the  duty;  but  he  felt  in  his  inmost  mmd  the 
incompatibility  of  the  scene  and  the  viands  be  tore  inm  with  the 
exercise  of  a  calm  and  rational  gratitude. 

I  hear  somebody  exclaim, — Would  you  have  Christians  sit 
down  at  table,  like  hogs  to  their  troughs,  without  remembering  the 
Giver  ! — no— I  would  have  them  sit  down  as  Christians,  remem- 
bering the  Giver,  and  less  like  hogs.  Or  if  their  appetites  must 
run  riot,  and  they  must  pamper  themselves  with  delicacies  for 
which  east  and  west  are  ransacked,  I  would  have  them  post- 
pone their  benediction  to  a  fitter  season,  when  appetite  is  laid ; 
when  the  still  small  voice  can  be  heard,  and  the  reason  of  the 
grace  returns — with  temperate  diet  and  restricted  dishes.  Glut- 
tony and  surfeiting  are  no  proper  occasions  for  thanksgiving. 
When  Jeshurun  waxed  fat,  we  read  that  he  kicked.  Virgil 
knew  the  harpy-nature  better,  when  he  put  into  the  mouth  of 
Celaeno  anything  but  a  blessing.  We  may  be  gratefully  sensible 
of  the  deliciousness  of  some  kinds  of  food  beyond  others,  though 
that  is  a  meaner  and  inferior  gratitude  :  but  the  proper  object  of 
the  grace  is  sustenance,  not  relishes;  daily  bread,  not  delicacies; 
4he  means  of  life,  and  not  the  means  of  pampering  the  carcass. 
With  what  frame  or  composure,  I  wonder,  can  a  city  chaplain 
pronounce  his  benediction  at  some  great  Hall- feast,  when  he 
knows  that  his  last  concluding  pious  word — and  that  in  all  pro- 
bability, the  sacred  name  which  he  preaches — is  but  the  signal 
for  so  many  impatient  harpies  to  commence  their  foul  orgies,  with 
as  little  sense  of  true  thankfulness  (which  is  temperance)  as  those 
Virgilian  fowl !  It  is  well  if  the  good  man  himself  does  not  feel 
his  devotions  a  little  clouded,  those  foggy  sensuous  steams  mingling 
with  and  polluting  the  pure  altar  sacrifice. 

The  severest  satire  upon  full  tables  and  surfeits  is  the  banquet 
which  Satan,  in  the  Paradise  Regained,  provides  for  a  temptation 
in  the  wilderness : 

A  table  richly  spread  in  regal  mode 
With  dishes  piled,  and  meats  of  noblest  sort 
And  savor ;  beasts  of  chase,  or  fowl  of  game. 
In  pastry  built,  or  from  the  spit,  or  boiled, 
Gris-amber-steamed ;  all  fish  from  sea  or  shore. 


GRACE  BEFORE  MEAT.  127 

Freshet  or  purling  brook,  for  which  was  drained 
Pontus,  and  Lucrine  bay,  and  Afric  coast. 

The  Tempter,  I  warrant  you,  thought  these  cates  would  go 
down  without  the  recommendatory  preface  of  a  benediction.  They 
are  like  to  be  short  graces  where  the  devil  plays  the  host.  I  am 
afraid  the  poet  wants  his  usual  decorum  in  this  place.  Was  he 
thinking  of  the  old  Roman  luxury,  or  of  a  gaudy  day  at  Cam- 
bridge ?  This  was  a  temptation  fitter  for  a  Heliogabalus.  The 
whole  banquet  is  too  civic  and  culinary,  and  the  accompaniments 
altogether  a  profanation  of  that  deep,  abstracted  holy  scene.  The 
mighty  artillery  of  sauces,  which  the  cook-fiend  conjures  up,  is 
out  of  proportion  to  the  simple  wants  and  plain  hunger  of  the 
guest.  He  that  disturbed  him  in  his  dreams,  from  his  dreams 
might  have  been  taught  better.  To  the  temperate  fantasies  of 
the  famished  Son  of  God,  what  sort  of  feasts  presented  themselves  ? 
He  dreamed  indeed, 

As  appetite  is  wont  to  dream. 

Of  meatp  and  drinks,  nature's  refreshment  sweet. 

But  what  meats  ? — 

Him  thoupjht,  he  by  the  brook  of  Cherith  stood, 

And  saw  the  ravens  with  their  horny  beaks 

Food  to  Elijah  bringing  even  and  morn  ; 

Though  ravenous,  taught  to  abstain  from  what  they  brought : 

He  saw  the  prophet  also  how  he  fled 

Into  the  desert  and  how  there  he  slept 

Under  a  juniper  ;  then  how  awaked 

He  found  his  supper  on  the  coals  prepared. 

And  by  the  angel  was  bid  rise  and  eat. 

And  ate  the  second  time  after  repose. 

The  strength  whereof  sufficed  him  forty  days : 

Sometimes,  that  with  Elijah  he  partook. 

Or  as  a  guest  with  Daniel  at  his  pulse. 

Nothing  in  Milton  is  finelier  fancied  than  these  temperate  dreams 
of  the  divine  Hungerer.  To  which  of  these  two  visionary  ban- 
quets, think  you,  would  the  introduction  of  what  is  called  the 
grace  have  been  the  most  fitting  and  pertinent  ? 

Theoretically  I  am  no  enemy  to  graces  ;  but  practically  I  own 


128  ELIA. 

that  (before  meat  especially)  they  seem  to  involve  something 
avi^kward  and  unseasonable.  Our  appetites,  of  one  or  another 
kind,  are  excellent  spurs  to  our  reason,  which  might  otherwise 
but  feebly  set  about  the  great  ends  of  preserving  and  continuing 
the  species.  They  are  fit  blessings  to  be  contemplated  at  a  dis- 
tance with  a  becoming  gratitude  ;  but  the  moment  of  appetite 
(the  judicious  reader  will  apprehend  me)  is,  perhaps,  the  least  fit 
season  for  that  exercise.  The  Quakers,  who  go  about  their  busi- 
ness of  every  description  with  more  calmness  than  we,  have  more 
title  to  the  use  of  these  benedictory  prefaces.  I  have  always 
admired  their  silent  grace,  and  the  more  because  I  have  observed 
their  applications  to  the  meat  and  drink  following  to  be  less  pas- 
sionate and  sensual  than  ours.  They  are  neither  gluttons  nor 
wine-bibbers  as  a  people.  They  eat,  as  a  horse  bolts  his  chopped 
hay,  with  indifference,  calmness,  and  cleanly  circumstances. 
They  neither  grease  nor  slop  themselves.  When  I  see  a  citizen 
in  his  bib  and  tucker,  I  cannot  imagine  it  a  surplice. 

I  am  no  Quaker  at  my  food.  I  confess  I  am  not  indifferent  to 
the  kinds  of  it.  Those  unctuous  morsels  of  deer'^flesh  were  not 
made  to  be  received  with  dispassionate  services.  I  hate  a  man 
who  swallows  it,  affecting  not  to  know  what  he  is  eating.  I  sus- 
pect his  taste  in  higher  matters.  I  shrink  instinctively  from  one 
who  professes  to  like  minced  veal.     There  is  a  physiognomical 

character  in  the  tastes  for  food.     C holds  that  a  man  cannot 

have  a  pure  mind  who  refuses  apple-dumplings.  I  am  not  certain 
but  he  is  right.  With  the  decay  of  my  first  innocence,  I  confess 
a  less  and  less  relish  daily  for  those  innocuous  cates.  The  whole 
vegetable  tribe  have  lost  their  gust  with  me.  Only  I  stick  to 
asparagus,  which  still  seems  to  inspire  gentle  thoughts.  I  am 
impatient  and  querulous  under  culinary  disappointments,  as  to 
come  home  at  the  dinner  hour,  for  instance,  expecting  some  savory 
mess,  and  to  find  one  quite  tasteless  and  sapidless.  Butter  ill 
melted — that  commonest  of  kitchen  failures — puts  me  beside  my 
tenor.  The  author  of  the  Rambler  used  to  make  inarticulate 
animal  noises  over  a  favorite  food.  Was  this  the  music  quite 
proper  to  be  preceded  by  the  grace  ?  or  would  the  pious  man 
have  done  better  to  postpone  his  devotions  to  a  season  when  the 
blessing  might  be  contemplated  with  less  perturbation  ?    I  quarrel 


GRACE  BEFORE  MEAT.  129 

with  no  man's  tastes,  nor  would  set  my  thin  face  against  those 
excellent  things,  in  their  way,  jollity  and  feasting.  But  as  these 
exercises,  however  laudable,  have  little  in  them  of  grace  or  grace- 
fulness, a  man  diould  be  sure,  before  he  ventures  so  to  grace 
them,  that  while  he  is  pretending  his  devotions  otherwhere,  he  is 
not  secretly  kissing  his  hand  to  some  great  fish — his  Dagon — 
with  a  special  consecration  of  no  ark  but  the  fat  tureen  before 
him.  Graces  are  the  sweet  preluding  strains  to  the  banquets  of 
angels  and  children  ;  to  the  roots  and  severer  repasts  of  the 
Chartreuse  ;  to  the  slender,  but  not  slenderly  acknowledged,  refec- 
tion of  the  poor  and  humble  man :  but  at  the  heaped-up  boards 
of  the  pampered  and  the  luxurious  they  become  of  dissonant  mood, 
less  timed  and  tuned  to  the  occasion,  methinks,  than  the  noise  of 
those  better  befitting  organs  would  be  which  children  hear  tales 
of,  at  Hog's  Norton.  We  sit  too  long  at  our  meals,  or  are  too 
curious  in  the  study  of  them,  or  too  disordered  in  our  application 
to  them,  or  engross  too  great  a  portion  of  those  good  things  (which 
should  be  common)  to  our  share,  to  be  able  with  any  grace  to  say 
grace.  To  be  thankful  for  what  we  grasp  exceeding  our  pro- 
portion, is  to  add  hypocrisy  to  injustice.  A  lurking  sense  of  this 
truth  is  what  makes  the  performance  of  this  duty  so  cold  and 
spiritless  a  service  at  most  tables.  In  houses  where  the  grace  is 
as  indispensable  as  the  napkin,  who  has  not  seen  that  never-set- 
tled question  arise,  as  to  who  shall  say  it  ?  while  the  good  man  of 
the  house  and  the  visitor  clergyman,  or  some  other  guest  belike 
of  next  authority,  from  years  or  gravity,  shall  be  bandying  about 
the  office  between  them  as  a  matter  of  compliment,  each  of  them 
not  unwilling  to  shift  the  awkward  burthen  of  an  equivocal  duty 
from  his  own  shoulders  ? 

I  once  drank  tea  in  company  with  two  Methodist  divines  of  differ- 
ent persuasions,  whom  it  was  my  fortune  to  introduce  to  each  other 
for  the  first  time  that  evening.  Before  the  first  cup  was  handed 
round,  one  of  these  reverend  gentlemen  put  it  to  the  other,  with 
all  due  solemnity,  whether  he  chose  to  say  anything.  It  seems  it 
is  the  custom  with  some  sectaries  to  put  up  a  short  prayer  before 
this  meal  also.  His  reverend  brother  did  not  at  first  quite  appre- 
hend him,  but  upon  an  explanation,  with  little  less  importance  he 
made  answer  that  it  was  not  a  custom  known  in  his  church  :  in 

PART  I.  10 


130  ELIA. 

which  courteous  evasion  the  other  acquiescing  for  good  manners' 
sake,  or  in  compliance  with  a  weak  brother,  the  supplementary 
or  tea-grace  was  waived  altogether.  With  what  spirit  might  not 
Lucian  have  painted  two  priests,  of  his  religion,  .playing  into  each 
other's  hands  the  compliment  of  performing  or  omitting  a  sacri- 
fice,— the  hungry  God  meantime,  doubtful  of  his  incense,  with 
expectant  nostrils  hovering  over  the  two  flamens,  and  (as  between 
two  stools)  going  away  in  the  end  without  his  supper  ! 

A  short  form  upon  these  occasions  is  felt  to  want  reverence  ;  a 
long  one,  I  am  afraid,  cannot  escape  the  charge  of  impertinence. 
I  do  not  quite  approve  of  the  epigrammatic  conciseness  with 
which  that  equivocal  wag  (but  my  pleasant  school-fellow)  C.  V. 
L.,  when  importuned  for  a  grace,  used  to  inquire,  first  slily  leer- 
ing down  the  table,  "  Is  there  no  clergyman  here," — significantly 
adding,  "  Thank  G — ."  Nor  do  I  think  our  old  form  at  school 
quite  pertinent,  where  we  were  used  to  preface  our  bald  bread-and- 
cheese-suppers  with  a  preamble,  connecting  with  that  humble 
blessing  a  recognition  of  benefits  the  most  awful  and  overwhelm- 
ing to  the  imagination  which  religion  has  to  offer.  Non  tunc  illis 
erat  locus.  I  remember  we  were  put  to  it  to  reconcile  the  phrase 
"  good  creatures,"  upon  which  the  blessing  rested,  with  the  fare 
set  before  us,  wilfully  understanding  that  expression  in  a  low 
and  animal  sense, — ^till  some  one  recalled  a  legend,  which  told 
how,  in  the  golden  days  of  Christ's,  the  young  Hospitallers  were 
wont  to  have  smoking  joints  of  roast  meat  upon  their  nightly 
boards,  till  some  pious  benefactor,  commiserating  the  decencies, 
rather  than  the  palates,  of  the  children,  commuted  our  flesh  for 
garments,  and  gave  us — horresco  refer  ens — ^trousers  instead  of 
mutton. 


DREAM-CHILDREN;  A  REVERIE.  131 


DREAM-CHILDREN;  A  REVERIE. 


Children  love  to  listen  to  stories  about  their  elders,  when  they 
were  children ;  to  stretch  their  imagination  to  the  conception  of 
a  traditionary  great-uncle,  or  grandame,  whom  they  never  saw. 
It  was  in  this  spirit  that  my  little  ones  crept  about  me  the  other 
evening  to  hear  about  their  great-grandmother  Field,  who  lived  in 
a  great  house  in  Norfolk  (a  hundred  times  bigger  than  that  in 
which  they  and  papa  lived)  which  had  been  the  scene — so  at 
least  it  was  generally  believed  in  that  part  of  the  country — of 
the  tragic  incidents  which  they  had  lately  become  familiar  with 
from  the  ballad  of  the  Children  in  the  Wood.  Certain  it  is  that 
the  whole  story  of  the  children  and  their  cruel  uncle  was  to  be 
seen  fairly  carved  out  in  wood  upon  the  chimney-piece  of  the 
great-hall,  the  whole  story  down  to  the  Robin  Redbreasts ;  till 
a  foolish  rich  person  pulled  it  down  to  set  up  a  marble  one  of 
modern  invention  in  its  stead,  with  no  story  upon  it.  Here  Alice 
put  out  one  of  her  dear  mother's  looks,  too  tender  to  be  called 
upbraiding.  Then  I  went  on  to  say,  how  religious  and  how 
good  their  great-grandmother  Field  was,  how  beloved  and  re- 
spected by  everybody,  though  she  was  not  indeed  the  mistress 
o£  this  great  house,  but  had  only  the  charge  of  it  (and  yet  in 
some  respects  she  might  be  said  to  be  the  mistress  of  it  too) 
committed  to  her  by  the  owner,  who  preferred  living  in  a  newer 
and  more  fashionable  mansion  which  he  had  purchased  some- 
where in  the  adjoining  county  ;  but  still  she  lived  in  it  in  a 
manner  as  if  it  had  been  her  own,  and  kept  up  the  dignity  of 
the  great  house  in  a  sort  while  she  lived,  which  afterwards 
came  to  decay,  and  was  nearly  pulled  down,  and  all  its  old 
ornaments  stripped  and  carried  away  to  the  owner's  other  house, 


132  ELI  A. 

where  they  were  set  up,  and  looked  as  awkward  as  if  some  one 
were  to  carry  away  the  old  tombs  they  had  seen  lately  at  the  Ab- 
bey, and  stick  them  up  in  Lady  C.'s  tawdry  gilt  drawing-room. 
Here  John  smiled,  as  much  as  to  say,  "  that  would  be  foolish 
indeed."  And  then  I  told  how,  when  she  came"  to  die,  her  fune- 
ral was  attended  by  a  concourse  of  all  the  poor,  and  some  of  the 
gentry,  too,  of  the  neighborhood,  for  many  miles  round,  to  show 
their  respect  for  her  memory,  because  she  had  been  such  a 
good  and  religious  woman  ;  so  good  indeed  that  she  knew  all  the 
Psaltery  by  heart,  ay,  and  a  great  part  of  the  Testament  besides. 
Here  little  Alice  spread  her  hands.  Then  I  told  what  a  tall,  up- 
right, graceful  person  their  great-grandmother  Field  once  was ; 
and  how  in  her  youth  she  was  esteemed  the  best  dancer — here 
Alice's  little  right  foot  played  an  involuntary  movement,  till,  upon 
my  looking  grave,  it  desisted — the  best  dancer,  I  was  saying,  in 
the  county,  till  a  cruel  disease,  called  a  cancer,  came,  and 
bowed  her  down  with  pain  ;  but  it  could  never  bend  her  good 
spirits,  or  make  them  stoop,  but  they  were  still  upright,  because 
she  was  so  good  and  religious.  Then  I  told  how  she  was  used 
to  sleep  by  herself  in  a  lone  chamber  of  the  great  lone  house ; 
and  Ijow  she  believed  that  an  apparition  of  two  infants  was  to 
be  seen  at  midnight  gliding  up  and  down  the  great  staircase  near 
where  she  slept,  but  she  said  "  those  innocents  would  do  her  no 
harm;"  and  how  frightened  I  used  to  be,  though  in  those  days 
I  had  my  maid  to  sleep  with  me,  because  I  was  never  half  so. 
good  or  religious  as  she — and  yet  I  never  saw  the.  infants.  Here 
John  expanded  all  his  eyebrows  and  tried  to  look  courageous. 
Then  I  told  how  good  she  was  to  all  her  grandchildren,  having 
us  to  the  great  house  in  the  holidays,  where  I  in  particular  used 
to  spend  many  hours  by  myself,  in  gazing  upon  the  old  busts  of 
the  twelve  Caesars,  that  had  been  Emperors  of  Rome,  till  the  old 
marble  heads  would  seem  to  live  again,  or  I  to  be  turned  into 
marble  with  them ;  how  I  could  never  be  tired  with  roaming 
about  that  huge  mansion,  with  its  vast  empty  rooms,  with  their 
worn-out  hangings,  fluttering  tapestry,  and  carved  oaken  pan- 
nels,  with  the  gilding  almost  rubbed  out — sometimes  in  the  spa- 
cious old-fashioned  gardens,  which  I  had  almost  to  myself,  unless 
when  now  and  then  a  solitary  gardening  man  would  cross  me — 


DREAM-CHILDREN ;  A  REVERIE.  133 

and  how  the  nectarines  and  peaches  hung  upon  the  walls, 
without  my  ever  offering  to  pluck  them,  because  they  were 
forbidden  fruit,  unless  now  and  then, — and  because  I  ha,d  more 
pleasure  in  strolling  about  among  the  old  melancholy-looking 
yew-trees,  or  the  firs,  and  picking  up  the  red-berries,  and  the 
fir-apples,  which  were  good  for  nothing  but  to  look  at — or  in 
lying  about  upon  the  fresh  grass  with  all  the  fine  garden 
smells  around  me — or  basking  in  the  orangery,  till  I  could 
almost  fancy  myself  ripening  too  along  with  the  oranges  and 
the  limes  in  that  grateful  warmth — or  in  watching  the  dace 
that  darted  to  and  fro  in  the  fish  pond,  at  the  bottom  of  the 
garden,  with  here  and  there  a  great  sulky  pike  hanging  mid- 
way down  the  water  in  silent  state,  as  if  it  mocked  at  their  im- 
pertinent friskings  ;  I  had  more  pleasure  in  these  busy-idle  diver- 
sions than  in  all  the  sweet  flavors  of  peaches,  nectarines,  oranges, 
and  such-like  common  baits  of  children.  Here  John  slily  depo- 
sited back  upon  the  plate  a  bunch  of  grapes,  which,  not  unob- 
served by  Alice,  he  had  meditated  dividing  with  her,  and  both 
seemed  willing  to  relinquish  them  for  the  present  as  irrelevant. 
Then,  in  somewhat  a  more  heightened  tone,  I  told  how,  though 
their  great-grandmother  Field  loved  all  her  grand-children,  yet  in 
an  especial  manner  she  might  be  said  to  love  their  uncle,  John 

L ,  because  he  was  so  handsome  and  spirited  a  youth,  and  a 

king  to  the  rest  of  us  ;  and,  instead  of  moping  about  in  solitary 
corners,  like  some  of  us,  he  would  mount  the  most  mettlesome 
horse  he  could  get,  when  but  an  imp  no  bigger  than  themselves, 
and  make  it  carry  him  half  over  the  county  in  a  morning,  and 
join  the  hunters  when  there  were  any  out ;  and  yet  he  loved  the 
old  great  house  and  gardens  too,  but  had  too  much  spirit  to  be 
always  pent  up  within  their  boundaries-^and  how  their  uncle 
grew  up  to  man's  estate  as  brave  as  he  was  handsome,  to  the  ad- 
miration of  everybody,  but  of  their  great-grandmother  Field 
most  especially ;  and  how  he  used  to  carry  me  upon  his  back 
when  I  was  a  lame-footed  boy — for  he  was  a  good  bit  older  than 
me — many  a  mile  when  I  could  not  walk  for  pain  ;  and  how  in 
after  life  he  became  lame-footed  too,  and  I  did  not  always  (I  fear) 
make  allowances  enough  for  him  when  he  was  impatient,  and  in 
pain,  nor  remember  sufficiently  how  considerate  he  had  been  to 


134  ELI  A. 

me  when  I  was  lame-footed  ;  and  how  when  he  died,  though  he 
had  not  been  dead  an  hour,  it  seemed  as  if  he  had  died  a  great 
while  ago,  such  a  distance  there  is  betwixt  life  and  death ;  and 
how  I  bore  his  death  as  I  thought  pretty  well  at  first,  but  after- 
wards it  haunted  and  haunted  me  ;  and  though  I  did  not  cry  or 
take  it  to  heart  as  some  do,  and  as  1  think  he  would  have  done  if 
I  had  died,  yet  I  missed  him  all  day  long,  and  knew  not  till  then 
how  much  I  had  loved  him.  I  missed  his  kindness,  and  I  missed 
his  crossness,  and  wished  him  to  be  alive  again,  to  be  quarrelling 
with  him  (for  we  quarrelled  sometimes),  rather  than  not  have  him 
again,  and  was  as  uneasy  without  him,  as  he  their  poor  uncle 
must  have  been  when  the  doctor  took  off  his  limb.  Here  the 
children  fell  a  crying,  and  asked  if  their  little  mourning  which 
they  had  on  was  not  for  uncle  John,  and  they  looked  up,  and 
prayed  me  not  to  go  on  about  their  uncle,  but  to  tell  them  some 
stories  about  their  pretty  dead  mother.  Then  I  told  how  for  seven 
long  years,  in  hope  sometimes,  sometimes  in  despair,  yet  persist- 
ing ever,  I  courted  the  fair  Alice  W — n  ;  and,  as  much  as  chil- 
dren could  understand,  I  explained  to  them  what  coyness,  and 
difficulty,  and  denial,  meant  in  maidens — when  suddenly,  turning 
to  Alice,  the  soul  of  the  first  Alice  looked  out  at  her  eyes  with 
such  a  reality  of  re-presentment,  that  I  became  in  doubt  which  of 
them  stood  there  before  me,  or  whose  that  bright  hair  was  ;  and 
while  I  stood  gazing,  both  the  children  gradually  grew  fainter  to 
my  view,  receding,  and  still  receding,  till  nothing  at  last  but  two 
mournful  features  were  seen  in  the  uttermost  distance,  which, 
without  speech,  strangely  impressed  upon  me  the  effects  of 
speech :  "  We  are  not  of  Alice,  nor  of  thee,  nor  are  we  children 
at  all.  The  children  of  Alice  call  Bartrum  father.  We  are 
nothing,  less  than  nothing,  and  dreams.  We  are  only  what  might 
have  been,  and  must  wait  upon  the  tedious  shores  of  Lethe  mil- 
lions of  ages  before  we  have  existence,  and  a  name  " and 

immediately  awaking,  I  found  myself  quietly  seated  in  my  bache- 
lor arm-chair,  where  I  had  fallen  asleep,  with  the  faithful  Bridget 
unchanged  by  my  side ;  but  John  L.  (or  James  Elia)  was  gone 
for  ever. 


DISTANT  CORRESPONDENTS.  135 


DISTANT  CORRESPONDENTS. 

IN   A   LETTER   TO   B.    F.,    ESQ.,    AT     SIDNEY,    NEW   SOUTH   WALES. 


My  DEAR  F. — When  I  think  how  welcome  the  sight  of  a  letter 
from  the  world  where  you  were  born  must  be  to  you  in  that 
strange  one  to  which  you  have  been  transplanted,  I  feel  some 
compunctious  visitings  at  my  long  silence.  But,  indeed,  it  is  no 
easy  effort  to  set  about  a  correspondence  at  our  distance.  The 
weary  world  of  waters  between  us  oppresses  the  imagination.  It 
is  difficult  to  conceive  how  a  scrawl  of  mine  should  ever  stretch 
across  it.  It  is  a  sort  of  presumption  to  expect  that  one's  thoughts 
should  live  so  far.  It  is  like  writing  for  posterity  ;  and  reminds 
me  of  one  of  Mrs.  Rowe's  superscriptions,  "  Alcander  to  Strephon 
in  the  shades."  Cowley's  Post- Angel  is  no  more  than  would  be 
expedient  in  such  an  intercourse.  One  drops  a  packet  at  Lom- 
bard-street, and  in  twenty-four  hours  a  friend  in  Cumberland  gets 
it  as  fresh  as  if  it  came  in  ice.  It  is  only  like,  whispering  through 
a  long  trumpet.  But  suppose  a  tube  let  down  from  the  moon, 
with  yourself  at  one  end,  and  the  man  at  the  other ;  it  would  be 
some  balk  to  the  spirit  of  conversation,  if  you  knew  that  the  dia- 
logue exchanged  with  that  interesting  theosophist  would  take  two 
or  three  revolutions  of  a  higher  luminary  in  its  passage.  Yet  for 
aught  I  know,  you  may  be  some  parasangs  nigher  that  primitive 
idea — Plato's  man — ^than  we  in  England  here  have  the  honor  to 
reckon  ourselves. 

Epistolary  matter  usually  compriseth  three  topics  ;  news,  sen- 
timent, and  puns.  In  the  latter,  I  include  all  non-serious  sub- 
jects ;  or  subjects  serious  in  themselves,  but  treated  after  my 
fashion,  non-seriously. — And  first,  for  news.     In  them  the  most 


136  ELI  A. 

desirable  circumstance,  I  suppose,  is  that  they  shall  be  true.  But 
what  security  can  I  have  that  what  I  now  send  you  for  truth  shall 
not,  before  you  get  it,  unaccountably  turn  into  a  lie  ?  For  in- 
stance, our  mutual  friend  P.  is  at  this  present  writing — my  Now 
— in  good  health,  and  enjoys  a  fair  share  of  worldly  reputation. 
You  are  glad  to  hear  it.  This  is  natural  and  friendly.  But  at 
this  present  reading — your  Now — he  may  possibly  be  in  the 
Bench,  or  going  to  be  hanged,  which  in  reason  ought  to  abate 
something  of  your  transport  (i.  e.  at  hearing  he  was  well,  &c.), 
or  at  least  considerably  to  modify  it.  I  am  going  to  the  play  this 
evening,  to  have  a  laugh  with  Munden.  You  have  no  theatre,  I 
think  you  told  me,  in  your  land  of  d <i  realities.  You  natu- 
rally lick  your  lips,  and  envy  me  my  felicity.  Think  but  a  mo- 
ment, and  you  will  correct  the  hateful  emotion.  Why  it  is  Sun- 
day morning  with  you,  and  1823.  This  confusion  of  tenses,  this 
grand  solecism  of  two  presents,  is  in  a  degree  common  to  all 
postage.  But  if  I  sent  you  word  to  Bath  or  Devizes,  that  I 
was  expecting  the  aforesaid  treat  this  evening,  though  at  the 
moment  you  received  the  intelligence  my  full  feast  of  fun  would 
be  over,  yet  there  would  be  for  a  day  or  two  after,  as  you  would 
well  know,  a  smack,  a  relish  left  upon  my  mental  palate,  which 
would  give  rational  encouragement  for  you  to  foster  a  portion  at 
least  of  the  disagreeable  passion,  which  it  was  in  part  my  inten- 
tion to  produce.  But  ten  months  hence,  your  envy  or  your  sym- 
pathy would  be  as  useless  as  a  passion  spent  upon  the  dead. 
Not  only  does  truth,  in  these  long  intervals,  un-essence  herself, 
but  (what  is  harder)  one  cannot  venture  a  crude  fiction,  for  the 
fear  that  it  may  ripen  into  a  truth  upon  the  voyage.  What  a 
wild  improbable  banter  I  put  upon  you  some  three  years  since 
of  Will  Weatherall  having  married  a  servant-maid  !  I  re- 
member gravely  consulting  you  how  we  were  to  receive  her — 
for  Will's  wife  was  in  no  case  to  be  rejected  ;  and  your  no  less 
serious  replication  in  the  matter ;  how  tenderly  you  advised  an 
abstemious  introduction  of  literary  topics  before  the  lady,  with  a 
caution  not  to  be  too  forward  in  bringing  on  the  carpet  matters 
more  within  the  sphere  of  her  intelligence  ;  your  deliberate  judg- 
ment, or  rather  wise  suspension  of  sentence,  how  far  jacks,  and 
spits,  and  mops,  could  with  propriety  be  introduced  as  subjects  j 


DISTANT  CORRESPONDENTS.  137 

whether  the  conscious  avoiding  of  all  such  matters  in  discourse 
would  not  have  a  worse  look  than  the  taking  of  them  casually  in 
our  way ;  in  what  manner  we  should  carry  ourselves  to  our 
maid  Becky,  Mrs.  William  Weatherall  being  by  ;  whether  we 
should  show  more  delicacy,  and  a  truer  sense  of  respect  for  Will's 
wife,  by  treating  Becky  with  our  customary  cliiding  before  her, 
or  by  an  unusual  deferential  civility  paid  to  Becky  as  to  a  person 
of  great  worth,  but  thrown  by  the  caprice  of  fate  into  an  humble 
station.  There  were  difficulties,  1  remember,  on  both  sides, 
which  you  did  me  the  favor  to  state  with  the  precision  of  a  law- 
yer, united  to  the  tenderness  of  a  friend.  I  laughed  in  my  sleeve 
at  your  solemn  pleadings,  when  lo !  while  I  was  valuing  myself 
upon  this  flam  put  upon  you  in  New  South  Wales,  the  devil  in 
England,  jealous  possibly  of  any  lie-children  not  his  own,  or 
working  after  my  copy,  has  actually  instigated  our  friend  (not 
three  days  since)  to  the  commission  of  a  matrimony,  which  T  had 
only  conjured  up  for  your  diversion.  William  Weatherall  has 
married  Mrs.  Cotterel's  maid.  But  to  take  it  in  its  truest  sense, 
you  will  see  my  dear  F.,  that  news  from  me  must  become  history 
to  you  ;  which  I  neither  profess  to  write,  nor  indeed  care  much 
for  reading.  No  person  under  a  diviner,  can  with  any  prospect 
of  veracity  conduct  a  correspondence  at  such  an  arm's  length. 
Two  prophets,  indeed,  might  thus  interchange  intelligence  with 
effect ;  the  epoch  of  the  writer  (Habbakuk)  falling  in  with  the 
true  present  time  of  the  receiver  (Daniel) ;  but  then  we  are  no 
prophets. 

Then  as  to  sentiment.  It  fares  little  better  with  that.  This 
kind  of  dish,  above  all,  requires  to  be  served  up  hot ;  or  sent  off 
in  water-plates,  that  your  friend  may  have  it  almost  as  warm  as 
yourself.  If  it  have  time  to  cool,  it  is  the  most  tasteless  of  all  cold 
meats.  I  have  oflen  smiled  at  a  conceit  of  the  late  Lord  C.  It 
seems  that  travelling  somewhere  about  Geneva,  he  came  to  some 
pretty  green  spot,  or  nook,  where  a  willow  or  something  hung  so 
fantastically  and  invitingly  over  a  stream — w^as  it  ? — or  a  rock  ? 
— no  matter — but  the  stillness  and  the  repose,  after  a  weary  jour- 
ney 'tis  likely,  in  a  languid  moment  of  his  Lordship's  hot  restless 
life,  so  took  his  fancy  that  he  could  imagine  no  place  so  proper, 
in  the  event  of  his  death,  to  lay  his  bones  in.     This  was  all  very 


133  ELIA. 

natural  and  excusable  as  a  sentiment,  and  shows  his  character  in 
a  very  pleasing  light.  But  when  from  a  passing  sentiment  it 
came  to  be  an  act ;  and  when,  by  a  positive  testamentary  dis- 
posal, his  remains  were  actually  carried  all  that  way  from  Eng- 
land ;  who  was  there,  some  desperate  sentimentalist  excepted,  that 
did  not  ask  the  question.  Why  could  not  his  lordship  have  found 
a  spot  as  solitary,  a  nook  as  romantic,  a  tree  as  green  and  pendent, 
with  a  siream  as  emblematic  to  his  purpose,  in  Surrey,  in  Dorset, 
or  in  Devon  ?  Conceive  the  sentiment  boarded  up,  freighted, 
entered  at  the  Custom  House  (startling  the  tide-waiters  with  the 
novelty),  hoisted  into  a  ship.  Conceive  it  pawed  about  and 
handled  between  the  rude  jests  of  tarpaulin  ruffians — a  thing  of 
its  delicate  texture — the  salt  bilge  wetting  it  till  it  became  as 
vapid  as  a  damaged  lustring.  Suppose  it  in  material  danger 
(mariners  have  some  superstition  about  sentiment)  of  being  tossed 
over  in  a  fresh  gale  to  some  propitiatory  shark  (spirit  of  Saint 
Gothard,  save  us  from  a  quietus  so  foreign  to  the  deviser's  pur- 
pose !)  but  it  has  happily  evaded  a  fishy  consummation.  Trace 
it  then  to  its  lucky  landing — at  Lyons  shall  we  say  ? — I  have  not 
the  map  before  me — jostled  upon  four  men's  shoulders — baiting 
at  this  town — stopping  to  refresh  at  t'other  village — waiting  a 
passport  here,  a  license  there  ;  the  sanction  of  the  magistracy  in 
this  district,  the  concurrence  of  the  ecclesiastics  in  that  canton  ; 
till  at  length  it  arrives  at  its  destination,  tired  out  and  jaded,  from 
a  brisk  sentiment,  into  a  feature  of  silly  pride  or  tawdry  senseless 
affectation.  How  few  sentiments,  my  dear  F.,  I  am  afraid  we 
can  set  down,  in  the  sailor's  phrase,  as  quite  sea- worthy. 

Lastly,  as  to  the  agreeable  levities,  which,  though  contempti- 
ble in  bulk,  are  the  twinkling  corpuscula  which  should  irradiate 
a  right  friendly  epistle — your  puns  and  small  jests  are,  I  appre- 
hend, extremely  circumscribed  in  their  sphere  of  action.  They 
are  so  far  from  a  capacity  of  being  packed  up  and  sent  beyond 
sea,  they  will  scarce  endure  to  be  transported  by  hand  from  this 
room  to  the  next.  Their  \igor  is  as  the  instant  of  their  birth. 
Their  nutriment  for  their  brief  existence  is  the  intellectual  atmo- 
sphere of  the  bystanders  :  or  this  last  is  the  fine  slime  of  Nilus — 
the  melior  lutus — whose  maternal  recipiency  is  as  necessary  as 
the  sol  pater  to  their  equivocal  generation.     A  pun  hath  a  hearty 


DISTANT  CORRESPONDENTS.  139 


kind  of  present  ear-kissing  smack  with  it ;  you  can  no  more  transr 
mit  it  in  its  pristine  flavor,  than  you  can  send  a  kiss. — Have  you 
not  tried  in  some' instances  to  palm  off  a  yesterday's  pun  upon  a 
gentleman,  and  has  it  answered  ?  Not  but  it  was  new  to  his  hear- 
ing, but  it  did  not  seem  to  come  new  from  you.  It  did  not  hitch 
in.  It  was  like  picking  up  at  a  village  ale-house  a  two-days'-old 
newspaper.  You  have  not  seen  it  before,  but  you  resent  the  stale 
thing  as  an  affront.  This  sort  of  merchandise  above  all  requires 
a  quick  return.  A  pun,  and  its  recognitory  laugh,  must  be  co- 
instantaneous.  The  one  is  the  brisk  lightning,  the  other  the 
fierce  thunder. 

A  moment's  interval,  and  the  link  is  snapped.  A  pun  is  re- 
flected from  a  friend's  face  as  from  a  mirror.  Who  would  con- 
suit  his  sweet  visnomy,  if  the  polished  surface  were  two  or  three 
minutes  (not  to  speak  of  twelve  months,  my  dear  F.)  in  giving 
back  its  copy  ? 

I  cannot  image  to  myself  whereabouts  you  are.  When  f  try 
to  fix  it,  Peter  Wilkins's  island  comes  across  me.  Sometimes  you 
seem  to  be  in  the  Hades  of  Thieves.  I  see  Diogenes  prying 
among  you  with  his  perpetual  fruitless  lantern.  What  must  you 
be  willing  by  this  time  to  give  for  the  sight  of  an  honest  man ! 
You  must  almost  have  forgotten  how  we  look.  And  tell  me,  what 
your  Sydneyites  do  ?  are  they  th**v*ng  all  day  long  ?  Merciful 
heaven  1  what  property  can  stand  against  such  a  depredation ! 
The  kangaroos — your  Aborigines — do  they  keep  their  primitive 
simplicity  un-Europe  tainted,  with  those  little  short  fore  puds, 
looking  like  a  lesson  formed  by  nature  to  the  pickpocket !  Marry, 
for  diving  into  fobs  they  are  rather  lamely  provided  a  priori ;  but 
if  the  hue  and  cry  were  once  up,  they  would  show  as  fair  a  pair 
of  hand-shifters  as  the  expertest  loco-motor  in  the  colony.  We 
hear  the  most  improbable  tales  at  this  distance.  Pray  is  it  true 
that  the  young  Spartans  among  you  are  born  with  six  fingers, 
which  spoils  their  scanning  ?  It  must  look  very  odd ;  but  use 
reconciles.  For  their  scansion,  it  is  less  to  be  regretted,  for  if  they 
take  it  into  their  heads  to  be  poets,  it  is  odds  but  they  turn  out, 
the  greater  part  of  them,  vile  plagiarists.  Is  there  much  differ- 
ence to  see,  too,  between  the  son  of  a  th**f,  and  the  grandson  ? 
or  where  does  the  taint  stop  ?     Do  you  bleach  in  three  or  four 


140  ELIA. 

generations?  I  have  many  questions  to  put,  but  ten  Delphic 
voyages  can  be  made  in  a  shorter  time  than  it  will  take  to  satisfy 
my  scruples.  Do  you  grow  your  own  hemp  ?  What  is  your 
staple  trade, — exclusive  of  the  national  profession,  I  mean? 
Your  locksmiths,  I  take  it,  are  some  of  your  great  capitalists. 

I  am  insensibly  chatting  to  you  as  familiarly  as  when  we  used 
to  exchange  good-morrows  out  of  our  old  contiguous  windows,  in 
pump-famed  Hare-court  in  the  Temple.  Why  did  you  ever  leave 
that  quiet  corner  ? — Why  did  I  ? — with  its  complement  of  four 
poor  elms,  from  whose  smoke-dried  barks,  the  theme  of  jesting 
ruralists,  I  picked  my  first  lady-birds  !  My  heart  is  as  dry  as 
that  spring  sometimes  proves  in  a  thirsty  August,  when  I  revert 
to  the  space  that  is  between  us ;  a  length  of  passage  enough  to 
render  obsolete  the  phrases  of  our  English  letters  before  they  can 
reach  you.  But  while  I  talk,  I  think  you  hear  me,  thoughts  dal- 
lying with  vain  surmise — 

Aye  me  !  while  thee  the  seas  and  sounding  shores 
Hold  far  away. 

Come  back,  before  I  am  grown  into  a  very  old  man,  so  as  you 
shall  hardly  know  me.  Come,  before  Bridget  walks  on  crutches. 
Girls  whom  you  left  children  have  become  sage  matrons  while 
you  are  tarrying  there.  The  blooming  Miss  W — r  (you  remem- 
ber Sally  W — r)  called  upon  us  yesterday,  an  aged  crone.  Folks, 
whom  you  knew,  die  off  every  year.  Formerly,  I  thought  that 
death  was  wearing  out, — I  stood  ramparted  about  with  so  many 
healthy  friends.  The  departure  of  J.  W.,two  springs  back,  cor- 
rected my  delusion.     Since  then  the  old  divorcer  has  been  busy. 

If  you  do  not  make  haste  to  return,  there  will  be  little  left  to 
greet  you,  of  me,  or  mine. 


THE  PRAISE  OF  CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.  141 


THE    PRAISE   OF  CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS, 


I  LIKE  to  meet  a  sweep — understand  me — not  a  grown  sweeper 
— old  chimney-sweepers  are  by  no  means  attractive — but  one  of 
those  tender  novices,  blooming  through  their  first  nigritude,  the 
maternal  washings  not  quite  effaced  from  the  cheek — such  as  come 
forth  with  the  dawn,  or  somewhat  earlier,  with  th6ir  little  profes- 
sional notes  sounding  like  the  peep  peep  of  a  young  sparrow  ;  or 
liker  to  the  matin  lark  should  I  pronounce  them,  in  their  aerial 
accents  not  seldom  anticipating  the  sun-rise  ? 

I  have  a  kindly  yearning  towards  these  dim  specks — poor  blots 
— innocent  blacknesses — 

I  reverence  these  young  Africans  of  our  own  growth — ^these 
almost  clergy  imps,  who  sport  their  cloth  without  assumption ; 
and  from  their  little  pulpits  (the  tops  of  the  chimneys),  in  the 
nipping  air  of  a  December  morning,  preach  a  lesson  of  patience 
to  mankind. 

When  a  child,  what  a  mysterious  pleasure  it  was  to  witness 
their  operation !  to  see  a  chit  no  bigger  than  one's-self,  enter,  one 
knew  not  by  what  process,  into  what  seemed  the  fauces  Ax^erm 
— to  pursue  him  in  imagination,  as  he  went  sounding  on  through 
so  many  dark  stifling  caverns,  horrid  shades ! — to  shudder  with 
the  idea  that  "  now,  surely,  he  must  be  lost  for  ever !" — to  revive 
at  hearing  his  feeble  shout  of  discovered  day-light — and  then  (O 
fulness  of  delight !)  running  out  of  doors,  to  come  just  in  time  to 
see  the  sable  phenomenon  emerge  in  safety,  the  brandished 
weapon  of  his  art  victorious  like  some  flag  waved  over  a  conquer- 
ed citadel !'  I  seem  to  remember  having  been  told,  that  a  bad 
sweep  was  once  left  in  a  sta-ck  with  a  brush,  to  indicate  which 
way  the  wind  blew.     It  was  an  awful  spectacle  certainly  -,  not 


142  ELIA. 

much  unlike  the  old  stage  direction  in  Macbeth,  where  the  "  Ap. 
parition  of  a  child  crowned,  with  a  tree  in  his  hand,  rises." 

Reader,  if  thou  meetest  one  of  these  small  gentry  in  thy  early 
rambles,  it  is  good  to  give  him  a  penny.  It  is  better  to  give  him 
two-pence.  If  it  be  starving  weather,  and  to  the  proper  troubles 
of  his  hard  occupation,  a  pair  of  kibed  heels  (no  unusual  accom- 
paniment) be  superadded,  the  demand  on  thy  humanity  will  surely 
rise  to  a  tester. 

There  is  a  composition,  the  ground- work  of  which  I  have  un- 
derstood to  be  the  sweet  wood  'yclept  sassafras.  This  wood  boil- 
ed down  to  a  kind  of  tea,  and  tempered  with  an  infusion  of  rnilL 
and  sugar,  hath  to  some  tastes  a  delicacy  beyond  the  China  luxu- 
ry. I  know  not  how  thy  palate  may  relish  it;  for  myself, 
with  every  deference  to  the  judicious  Mr.  Read,  who  hath  time 
out  of  mind  kept  open  a  shop  (the  only  one  he  avers  in  London) 
for  the  vending  of  this  "  wholesome  and  pleasant  beverage,"  on 
the  south  side  of  Fleet-street,  as  thou  approachest  Bridge-street — 
the  only  Salopian  house — I  have  never  yet  ventured  to  dip  my 
own  particular  lip  in  a  basin  of  his  commended  ingredients — a 
cautious  premonition  to  the  olfactories  constantly  whispering  to 
me,  that  my  stomach  must  infallibly,  with  all  due  courtesy,  de- 
cline it.  Yet  I  have  seen  palates,  otherwise  not  uninstructed  in 
dietetical  elegancies,  sup  it  up  with  avidity. 

I  know  not  by  what  particular  conformation  of  the  organ  it 
happens,  but  I  have  always  found  that  this  composition  is  surpris- 
ingly gratifying  to  the  palate  of  a  youjig  chimney-sweeper — 
whether  the  oily  particles  (sassafras  is  slightly  oleaginous)  do  at- 
tenuate and  soften  the  fuliginous  concretions,  which  are  sometimes 
found  (in  dissections)  to  adhere  to  the  roof  of  the  mouth  in  these 
unfledged  practitioners ;  or  whether  Nature,  sensible  that  she  had 
mingled  too  much  of  bitter  wood  in  the  lot  of  these  raw  victims, 
caused  to  grow  out  of  the  earth  her  sassafras  for  a  sweet  lenitive 
— but  so  it  is,  that  no  possible  taste  or  'odor  to  the  sense  of  a  young 
chimney  sweeper  can  convey  a  delicate  excitement  comparable  to 
this  mixture.  Being  penniless,  they  will  yet  hang  their  black 
heads  over  the  ascending  steam,  to  gratify  one  sense  if  possible, 
seemingly  no  less  pleased  than  those  domestic  animals— cats — 
when  they  purr  over  a  new  found  sprig  of  valerian.     There  is 


THE  PRAISE  OF  CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.  143 

something  more  in  these  sympathies  than  philosophy  can  in- 
culcate. 

Now  albeit  Mr.  Read  boasteth,  not  without  reason,  that  his  is 
the  only  Salopmn  house  ;  yet  be  it  known  to  thee,  reader — if  thou 
art  one  who  keepest  what  are  called  good  hours,  thou  art  haply 
ignorant  of  the  fact — he  hath  a  race  of  industrious  imitators,  who 
from  stalls,  and  under  open  sky,  dispense  the  same  savory  mess 
to  humbler  customers,  at  that  dead  time  of  the  dawn,  when  (as 
extremes  meet)  the  rake,  reeling  home  from  his  midnight  cups, 
and  the  hard-handed  artisan  leaving  his  bed  to  resume  the  pre- 
mature labors  of  the  day,  jostle,  not  unfrequently  to  the  manifest 
disconcerting  of  the  former,  for  the  honors  of  the  pavement.  It 
is  the  time  when,  in  summer,  between  the  expired  and  the  not  yet 
relumined  kitchen-fires,  the  kennels  of  our  fair  metropolis  give 
forth  their  least  satisfactory  odors.  The  rake,  who  wisheth  to 
dissipate  his  o'er-night  vapors  in  more  grateful  coffee,  curses  the 
ungenial  fume,  as  he  passeth  ;  but  the  artisan  stops  to  taste,  and 
blesses  the  fragrant  breakfast. 

This  is  saloop — the  precocious  herb-woman's  darling — the  de- 
light of  the  early  gardener,  who  transports  his  smoking  cabbages 
by  break  of  day  from  Hammersmith  to  Covent-garden's  famed 
piazzas — the  delight,  and  oh  !  I  fear,  too  often  the  envy,  of  the  un- 
pennied  sweep.  Him  shouldst  thou  haply  encounter,  with  his  dim 
visage  pendent  over  the  grateful  steam,  regale  him  with  a  sump- 
tuous basin  (it  will  cost  thee  but  three-halfpennies)  and  a  slice 
of  delicate  bread  and  butter  (an  added  halfpenny) — so  may  thy 
culinary  fires,  eased  of  the  o'er-charged  secretions  from  thy  worse- 
placed  hospitalities,  curl  up  a  lighter  volume  to  the  welkin — so 
may  the  descending  soot  never  taint  thy  costly  well-ingredienced 
soups — nor  the  odious  cry,  quick-reaching  from  street  to  street,  of 
the  Jlred  chimney,  invite  the  rattling  engines  from  ten  adjacent 
parishes,  to  disturb  for  a  casual  scintillation  thy  peace  and  pocket ! 

I  am  by  nature  extremely  susceptible  of  street  affronts;  the 
jeers  and  taunts  of  the  populace  ;  the  low-bred  triumph  they  dis- 
play over  the  casual  trip,  or  splashed  stocking,  of  a  gentleman. 
Yet  can  I  endure  the  jocularity  of  a  young  sweep  with  something 
more  than  forgiveness. — In  the  last  winter  but  one,  pacing  along 
Cheapside  with  my  accustomed  precipitation  when  I  walked  west- 


144  ELIA. 

ward,  a  treacherous  slide  brought  me  upon  my  back  in  an  instant. 
I  scrambled  up  with  pain  and  shame  enough — yet  outwardly  try- 
ing to  face  it  down,  as  if  nothing  had  happened — when  the  roguish 
grin  of  one  of  these  young  wits  encountered  me.  There  he 
stood,  pointing  me  out  with  his  dusky  finger  to  the  mob,  and  to 
a  poor  woman  (I  suppose  his  mother)  in  particular,  till  the  tears 
for  the  exquisiteness  of  the  fun  (so  he  thought  it)  worked  them- 
selves out  at  the  corners  of  his  poor  red  eyes,  red  from  many 
a  previous  weeping,  and  soot-inflamed,  yet  twinkling  through  all 

with  such  a  joy,  snatched  out  of  desolation,  that  Hogarth . 

But  Hogarth  has  got  him  already  (how  could  he  miss    him  ?) 

in  the  March  to  Finchley,  grinning  at  the  pye-man there  he 

stood,  as  he  stands  in  the  picture,  irremovable,  as  if  the  jest  was 
to  last  for  ever — with  such  a  maximum  of  glee,  and  minimum 
of  mischief,  in  his  mirth — for  the  grin  of  a  genuine  sweep  hath 
absolutely  no  malice  in  it — that  I  could  have  been  content,  if 
the  honor  of  a  gentlem'kn  might  endure  it,  to  have  remained 
his  butt  and  his  mockery  till  midnight. 

I  am  by  theory  obdurate  to  the  seductiveness  of  what  are 
called  a  fine  set  of  tfeeth.  Every  pair  of  rosy  lips  (the  ladies 
must  pardon  me)  is  a  casket  presumably  holding  such  jewels ; 
but,  methinks,  they  should  take  leave  to  "  air  "  them  as  frugally 
as  possible.  The  fine  lady,  or  fine  gentleman,  who  show  me  their 
teeth,  show  me  bones.  Yet  must  I  confess,  that  from  the  mouth 
of  a  true  sweep  a  display  (even  to  ostentation)  of  those  white  and 
shining  ossifications,  strikes  me  as  an  agreeable  anomaly  in  man- 
ners, and  an  allowable  piece  of  foppery.     It  is,  as  when 

A  sable-cloud 
Turns  forth  her  silver  lining  on  the  night. 

It  is  like  some  remnant  of  gentry  not  quite  extinct ;  a  badge  of 
better  days ;  a  hint  of  nobility  : — and,  doubtless,  under  the  ob- 
scuring darkness  and  double  night  of  their  forlorn  disguisement, 
oftentimes  lurketh  good  blood,  and  gentle  conditions,  derived  from 
lost  ancestry,  and  a  lapsed  pedigree.  The  premature  apprentice- 
ments  of  those  tender  victims  give  but  too  much  encouragement, 
I  fear,  to  clandestine  and  almost  infantile  abductions  ;  the  seeds 


THE  PRAISE  OF  CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.  145 

of  civility  and  true  courtesy,  so  often  discernible  in  these  young 
grafts  (not  otherwise  to  be  accounted  for)  plainly  hint  at  some 
forced  adoptions  ;  many  noble  Rachels  mourning  for  their  chil- 
dren, even  in  our  days,  countenance  the  fact ;  the  tales  of  fairy- 
spiriting  may  shadow  a  lamentable  verity,  and  the  recovery  of  the 
young  Montagu  be  but  a  solitary  instance  of  good  fortune  out  of 
many  irreparable  and  hopeless  defiliations. 

In  one  of  the  state-beds  at  Arundel  Castle,  a  few  years  since — 
under  a  ducal  canopy — (that  seat  of  the  Howards  is  an  object 
of  curiosity  to  visitors,  chiefly  for  its  beds,  in  which  the  late  duke 
was  especially  a  connoisseur)— encircled  with  curtains  of  delicat- 
est  crimson,  with  starry  coronets  inwoven — folded  between  a  pair 
of  sheets  whiter  and  softer  than  the  lap  where  Venus  lulled  As- 
canius — was  discovered  by  chance,  after  all  methods  of  search 
had  failed,  at  noon-day,  fast  asleep,  a  lost  chimney-sweeper.  The 
little  creature,  having  somehow  confounded  his  passage  among 
the  intricacies  of  those  lordly  chimneys,  by  some  unknown  aper- 
ture had  alighted  upon  this  magnificent  chamber ;  and,  tired 
with  his  tedious  explorations,  was  unable  to  resist  the  delicious 
invitement  to  repose,  which  he  there  saw  exhibited ;  so  creep- 
ing between  the  sheets  very  quietly,  laid  his  black  head  upon 
the  pillow,  and  slept  like  a  young  Howard. 

Such  is  the  account  given  to  the  visitors  at  the  Castle. — But  I 
cannot  help  seeming  to  perceive  a  confirmation  of  what  I  have 
just  hinted  at  in  this  story.  A  high  instinct  was  at  work  in  the 
case,  or  I  am  mistaken.  Is  it  probable  that  a  poor  child  of  that 
description,  with  whatever  weariness  he  might  be  visited  would 
have  ventured,  under  such  a  penalty  as  he  would  be  taught  to 
expect,  to  uncover  the  sheets  of  a  Duke's  bed,  and  deliberately  to 
lay  himself  down  between  them,  when  the  rug  or  the  carpet  pre- 
sented an  obvious  couch,  still  far  above  his  pretensions — is  this 
probable,  I  would  ask,  if  the  great  power  of  nature,  which  I  con- 
tend for,  had  not  been  manifested  within  him,  prompting  to  the 
adventure  ?  Doubtless  this  young  nobleman  (for  such  my  mind 
misgives  me  that  he  must  be)  was  allured  by  some  memory,  not 
amounting  to  full  consciousness,  of  his  condition  in  infancy,  when 
he  was  used  to  be  lapped  by  his  mother,  of* his  nurse,  in  just  such 
sheets  as  he  there  found,  into  which  he  was  now  but  creeping  back 

PART  I.  11 


146  ELIA. 

as  into  his  proper  incunabula,  -and  resting-place. — By  no  other 
than  by  this  sentiment  of  a  pre-existent  state  (as  I  may  call  it), 
can  I  explain  a  deed  so  venturous,  and,  indeed,  upon  any  other 
system,  so  indecorous,  in  this  tender,  but  unseasonable  sleeper. 

My  pleasant  friend  Jem  White  was  so  impressed  with  a  belief 
of  metamorphoses  like  this  frequently  taking  place,  that  in  some 
sort  to  reverse  the  wrongs  of  fortune  in  these  poor  changelings, 
he  instituted  an  annual  feast  of  chimney-sweepers,  at  which  it 
was  his  pleasure  to  officiate  as  host  and  waiter.  It  was  a  solemn 
supper  held  in  Smithfield,  upon  the  yearly  return  of  the  fair  of  St. 
Bartholomew.  Cards  were  issued  a  week  before  to  the  master- 
sweeps  in  and  about  the  metropolis,  confining  the  invitation  to  their 
younger  fry.  Now  and  then  an  elderly  stripling  would  get  in 
among  us,  and  be  good-naturedly  winked  at ;  but  our  main  body 
were  infantry.  One  unfortunate  wight,  indeed,  who,  relying  upon 
his  dusky  suit,  had  intruded  himself  into  our  party,  but  by  tokens 
was  providentially  discovered  in  time  to  be  no  chimney-sweeper 
(all  is  not  soot  which  looks  so),  was  quoited  out  of  the  presence 
with  universal  indignation,  as  not  having  on  the  wedding  garment ; 
but  in  general  the  greatest  harmony  prevailed.  The  place  chosen 
was  a  convenient  spot  among  the  pens,  at  the  north  side  of  the 
fair,  not  so  far  distant  as  to  be  impervious  to  the  agreeable  hubbub 
of  that  vanity  ;  but  remote  enough  not  to  be  obvious  to  the  inter- 
ruption of  every  gaping  spectator  in  it.  The  guests  assembled 
about  seven.  Tn  those  little  temporary  parlors  three  tables  were 
spread  with  napery,  not  so  fine  as  substantial,  and  at  every  board 
a  comely  hostess  presided  with  her  pan  of  hissing  sausages.  The 
nostrils  of  the  young  rogues  dilated  at  the  savor.  James  White, 
as  head  waiter,  had  charge  of  the  first  table  ;  and  myself,  with 
our  trusty  companion  Bigod,  ordinarily  ministered  to  the  other 
two.  There  was  clambering  and  jostlingi  you  may  be  sure,  who 
should  get  at  the  first  table — for  Rochester  in  his  maddest  days 
could  not  have  done  the  humors  of  the  scene  with  more  spirit  than 
my  friend.  After  some  general  expression  of  thanks  for  the 
honor  the  company  had  done  him,  his  inaugural  ceremony  was  to 
clasp  the  greasy  waist  of  old  dame  Ursula  (the  fattest  of  the  three), 
that  stood  frying  and"  fretting,  half-blessing,  half-cursing  "  the 
gentleman,"  and  imprint  upon  her  chaste  lips  a  tender  salute, 


THE  PRAISE  OF  CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.  147 

whereat  the  universal  host  would  set  up  a  shout  that  tore  the  con- 
cave, while  hundreds  of  grinning  teeth  startled  the  night  with 
their  brightness.  O  it  was  a  pleasure  to  see  the  sable  younkers 
lick  in  the  unctuous  meat,  with  his  more  unctuous  sayings — how 
he  would  fit  the  tit-bits  to  the  puny  mouths,  reserving  the  lengthier 
links  for  the  seniors — how  he  would  intercept  a  morsel  even  in 
the  jaws  of  some  young  desperado,  declaring  it  "  must  to  the  pan 
again  to  be  browned,  for  it  was  not  fit  for  a  gentleman's  eating  " — 
how  he  would  recommend  this  slice  of  white  bread,  or  that  piece 
of  kissing-crust,  to  a  tender  juvenile,  advising  them  all  to  have  a 
care  of  cracking  their  teeth,  which  were  their  best  patrimony, — 
how  genteelly  he  would  deal  about  the  small  ale,  as  if  it  were 
wine,  naming  the  brewer,  and  protesting  if  it  were  not  good  he 
should  lose  their  custom  ;  with  a  special  recommendation  to  wipe 
the  lip  before  drinking.  Then  we  had  our  toasts — "  The  King," 
— "the  Cloth," — which,  whether  they  understood  or  not,  was 
equally  diverting  and  flattering  ; — and  for  a  crowning  sentiment, 
which  never  failed,  "  May  the  Brush  supersede  the  Laurel !"  All 
these,  and  fifty  other  fancies,  which  were  rather  felt  than  compre- 
hended by  his  guests,  would  he  utter,  standing  upon  tables,  and 
prefacing  every  sentiment  with  a  "  Gentlemen,  give  me  leave  to 
propose  so  and  so,"  which  was  a  prodigious  comfort  to  those  young 
orphans  ;  every  now  and  tlien  stuffing  into  his  mouth  (for  it  did 
not  do  to  be  squeamish  on  these  occasions)  indiscriminate  pieces 
of  those  reeking  sausages,  which  pleased  them  mightily,  and  was 
the  savoriest  part,  you  may  believe,  of  the  entertainment. 

Golden  lads  and  lasses  must, 

As  chimney-sweepers,  come  to  dust — 

James  White  is  extinct,  and  with  him  these  suppers  have  long 
ceased.  He  carried  away  with  him  half  the  fun  of  the  world 
when  he  died — of  my  world,  at  least.  His  old  clients  look  for 
him  among  the  pens;  and,  missing  him,  reproach  the  altered 
feast  of  St.  Bartholomew,  and  thp  glory  of  Smithfield  departed 
for  ever. 


148  ELIA. 


A  COMPLAINT  OF  THE  DECAY  OF  BEGGARS 

IN  THE  METROPOLIS. 


The  all-sweeping  besom  of  societarian  reformation — your  only 
modern  Alcides'  club  to  rid  the  time  of  its  abuses — is  uplift  with 
many-handed  sway  to  extirpate  the  last  fluttering  tatters  of  the 
bugbear  Mendicity  from  the  metropolis.  Scrips,  wallets,  bags 
— staves,  dogs,  and  crutches — the  whole  mendicant  fraternity  with 
all  their  baggage,  are  fast  posting  out  of  the  purlieus  of  this 
eleventh  persecution.  From  the  crowded  crossing,  from  the 
corners  of  streets  and  turnings  of  alleys,  the  parting  Genius  of 
Beggary  is  "  with  sighing  sent." 

I  do  not  approve  of  this  wholesale  going  to  work,  this  imperti- 
nent crusado,  or  helium  ad  exterminationem,  proclaimed  against  a 
species.     Much  good  might  be  sucked  from  these  Beggars. 

They  were  the  oldest  and  the  honorablest  form  of  pauperism. 
Their  appeals  were  to  our  common  nature  ;  less  revolting  to  an 
ingenuous  mind  than  to  be  a  suppliant  to  the  particular  humors 
or  caprice  of  any  fellow-creature,  or  set  of  fellow-creatures,  paro- 
chial or  societarian.  Theirs  were  the  only  rates  uninvidious  in 
the  levy,  ungrudged  in  the  assessment. 

There  was  a  dignity  springing  from  the  y,ery  depth  of  their 
desolation  ;  as  to  be  naked  is  to  be  so  much  nearer  to  the  being  a 
man,  than  to  go  in  livery. 

The  greatest  spirits  have  felt  this  in  their  reverses  ;  and  when 
Dionysius  from  king  turned  schoolmaster,  do  we  feel  anything 
towards  him  but  contempt  ?  Could  Vandyke  have  made  a  picture 
of  him,  swaying  a  ferula  for  a  sceptre,  which  would  have  afl^ected 
our  minds  with  the  same  heroic  pity,  the  same  compassionate 


A  COMPLAINT  OF  THE  DECAY  OF  BEGGARS.  149 

admiration,  with  which  we  regard  his  Belisarius  begging  for  an 
dbolum?  Would  the  moral  have  been  more  graceful,  more 
pathetic  ? 

The  Blind  Beggar  in  the  legend — the  father  of  pretty  Bessy — 
whose  story  doggrel  rhymes  and  ale-house  signs  cannot  so  degrade 
or  attenuate,  but  that  some  sparks  of  a  lustrous  spirit  will  shine 
through  the  disguisements — ^this  noble  Earl  of  Cornwall  (as  indeed 
he  was)  and  memorable  sport  of  fortune,  fleeing  from  the  unjust 
sentence  of  his  liege  lord,  stript  of  all,  and  seated  on  the  flowering 
green  of  Bethnal,  with  his  more  fresh  and  springing  daughter  by 
his  side,  illumining  his  rags  and  his  beggary— would  the  child 
and  parent  have  cut  a  better  figure,  doing  the  honors  of  a  counter, 
or  expiating  their  fallen  condition  upon  the  three-foot  eminence 
of  some  sempstering  shop-board  ? 

In  tale  or  history  your  Beggar  is  ever  the  just  antipode  to  your 
King.  The  poets  and  romancical  writers  (as  dear  Margaret  New- 
castle would  call  them),  when  they  would  most  sharply  and  feel- 
ingly paint  a  reverse  of  fortune,  never  stop  till  they  have  brought 
down  their  hero  in  good  earnest  to  rags  and  the  wallet.  The 
depth  of  the  descent  illustrates  the  height  he  falls  from.  There 
is  no  medium  which  can  be  presented  to  the  imagination  without 
offence.  There  is  no  breaking  the  fall.  Lear,  thrown  from  his 
palace,  must  divest  him  of  his  garments,  till  he  answer  "  mere 
nature  ;"  and  Cresseid,  fallen  from  a  prince's  love,  must  extend 
her  pale  arms,  pale  with  other  whiteness  than  of  beauty,  suppli- 
cating lazar  alms  with  bell  and  clap-dish. 

The  Lucian  wits  knew  this  very  well ;  and,  with  a  converse 
policy,  when  they  would  express  scorn  of  greatness  without  the 
pity,  they  show  us  an  Alexander  in  the  shades  cobbling  shoes,  or 
a  Semiramis  getting  up  foul  linen. 

How  would  it  sound  in  song,  that  a  great  monarch  had  declined 
his  affections  upon  the  daughter  of  a  baker !  yet  do  we  feel  the 
imagination  at  all  violated  when  we  read  the  "true  ballad," 
where  King  Cophetua  woos  the  beggar  maid  ? 

Pai7perism,  pauper,  poor  man,  are  expressions  of  pity,  but  pity 
alloyed  with  contempt.  No  one  properly  contemns  a  beggar. 
Poverty  is  a  comparative  thing,  and  each  degree  of  it  is  mocked, 
by  its  "  neighbor  grice."     Its  poor  rents  and  cominffs-in  are  soon 


150  ELIA. 

summed  up  and  told.  Its  pretences  to  property  are  almost  ludi- 
crous. Its  pitiful  attempts  to  save  excite  a  smile.  Every  scorn- 
ful companion  can  weigh  his  trifle-bigger  purse  against  it.  Poor 
man  reproaches  poor  man  in  the  streets  with  impolitic  mention 
of  his  condition,  his  own  being  a  shade  better,  while  the  rich 
pass  by  and  jeer  at  both.  No  rascally  comparative  insults  a 
Beggar,  or  thinks  of  weighing  purses  with  him.  He  is  not  in  the 
scale  of  comparison.  He  is  not  under  the  measure  of  property. 
He  confessedly  hath  none,  any  more  than  a  dog  or  a  sheep.  No 
one  twitteth  him  with  ostentation  above  his  means.  No  one 
accuses  him  of  pride,  or  upbraideth  him  with  mock  humility. 
None  jostle  with  him  for  the  wall,  or  pick  quarrels  for  precedency. 
No  wealthy  neighbor  seeketh  to  eject  him  from  his  tenement.  No 
man  sues  him.  No  man  goes  to  law  with  him.  If  I  were  not  the 
independent  gentleman  that  I  am,  rather  than  I  would  be  a  retainer 
to  the  great,  a  led  captain,  or  a  poor  relation,  I  would  choose,  out 
of  the  delicacy  and  true  greatness  of  my  mind,  to  be  a  Beggar. 

Rags,  which  are  the  reproach  of  poverty,  are  the  Beggar's  robes 
and  graceful  insignia  of  his  profession,  his  tenure,  his  full  dress^ 
the  suit  in  which  he  is  expected  to  show  himself  in  public.  He  is 
never  out  of  the  fashion,  or  limpeth  awkwardly  behind  it.  He  is 
not  required  to  put  on  court  mourning.  He  weareth  all  colors, 
fearing  none.  His  costume  hath  undergone  less  change  than  the 
Quaker's.  He  is  the  only  man  in  the  universe  who  is  not  obliged 
to  study  appearances.  The  ups  and  downs  of  the  world  concern 
him  no  longer.  He  alone  continueth  in  one  stay.  The  price  of 
stock  or  land  affecteth  him  not.  The  fluctuations  of  agricultural 
or  commercial  prosperity  touch  him  not,  or  at  worst  but  change 
his  customers.  He  is  not  expected  to  become  bail  or  surety  for 
any  one.  No  man  troubleth  him  with  questioning  his  religion  or 
politics.     He  is  the  only  free  man  in  the  universe. 

The  Mendicants  of  this  great  city  were  so  many  of  her  sights, 
her  lions.  I  can  no  more  spare  them  than  I  could  the  Cries  of 
London.  No  corner  of  a  street  is  complete  without  them.  They 
are  as  indispensable  as  the  Ballad  Singer;  and  in  their  pic- 
turesque attire  as  ornamental  as  the  signs  of  old  London.  They 
were  the  standing  morals,  emblems,  mementos,  dial-mottos,  the 


A  COMPLAINT  OF  THE  DECAY  OF  BEGGARS.  151 

spital  sermons,  the  books  for  children,  the  salutary  checks  and 
pauses  to  the  high  and  rushing  tide  of  greasy  citizenry — 


Look 


Upon  that  poor  and  broken  bankrupt  there. 

Above  all,  those  old  blind  Tobits  that  used  to  line  the  wall  of  Lin- 
coln's-Inn  Garden,  before  modern  fastidiousness  had  expelled 
them,  casting  up  their  ruined  orbs  to  catch  a  ray  of  pity,  and  (if 
possible)  of  light,  with  their  faithful  Dog  Guide  at  their  feet, — 
whither  are  they  fled  ?  or  into  what  corners  blind  as  themselves, 
have  they  been  driven,  out  of  the  wholesome  air  and  sun- warmth  ? 
immersed  between  four  walls,  in  what  withering  poor-house  do 
they  endure  the  penalty  of  double-darkness,  where  the  chink  of 
the  dropt  half-penny  Ho  more  consoles  their  forlorn  bereavement, 
far  from  the  sound  of  the  cheerful  and  hope-stirring  tread  of  the 
passenger?     Where  hang  their  useless  staves?  and  who  will 

farm  their  dogs  ?     Have  the  overseers  of  St.  L caused  them 

to  be  shot  ?  or  were  they  tied  up  in  sacks,  and  dropped  into  the 

Thames,  at  the  suggestion  of  B ,  the  mild  rector  of ? 

Well  fare  the  soul  of  unfastidious  Vincent  Bourne,  most  clas- 
sical, and  at  the  same  time,  most  English  of  the  Latinists ! — who 
has  treated  of  this  human  and  quadrupedal  alliance,  this  dog  and 
man  friendship,  in  the  sweetest  of  his  poems,  the  EpUaphium  in 
Canein,  or.  Dog's  Epitaph.  Reader,  peruse  it ;  and  say,  if  cus- 
tomary sights,  which  could  call  up  such  gentle  poetry  as  this, 
were  of  a  nature  to  do  more  harm  or  good  to  the  moral  sense  of 
the  passengers  through  the  daily  thoroughfares  of  a  vast  and  busy 
metropolis. 

Pauperis  hie  Iri  requiesco  Lyciscus,  herilis,  , 

Dum  vixi,  tutela  vigil  columenque  senectae. 

Dux  caeco  fidus :  nee,  me  dueente,  solebat, 

Praetenso  hinc  atque  hine  baculo,  per  iniqua  locorum 

Ineertam  explorare  viam  ;  sed  fila  secutus, 

Quae  dubios  regerent  passus,  vestigia  tuta 

Fixit  inoffenso  gressu  ;  gelidumque  sedile 

In  nudo  nactus  saxo,  qUa  praetereuntium 

Unda  frequens  eonfluxit,  ibi  miserisque  tenebras 

Lamentis,  noctemque  oculis  ploravit  obortam. 

Ploravit  nee  frustra ;  obolum  dedit  alter  et  alter. 


152  ELI  A. 

Queis  corda  et  mentem  indiderat  natura  benignam. 

Ad  latus  interea  jacui  sopitus  herile, 

Vel  mediis  vigil  in  somnis ;  ad  herilia  jussa 

Auresque  atque  animum  arrectus,  seu  frustula  amice 

Porrexit  sociasque  dapes,  seu  longa  diei 

Taedia  perpessus,  reditum  sub  nocte  parabat. 

Hi  mores,  haec  vita  fuit,  dum  fata  sinebant, 
Dum  neque  languebam  morbis,  nee  inerte  senecta; 
Quae  tandem  obrepsit,  veterique  satellite  caecum 
Orbavit  dominum  :  prisci  sed  gratia  facti 
Ne  tota  intereat,  longos  delecta  per  annos, 
Exiguum  hunc  Irus  tumulum  de  cespite  fecit, 
Etsi  inopis,  non  ingratae,  munuscula  dextrae ; 
Carmine  signavitque  brevi,  dominumque  canemque 
Quod  memoret,  fidumque  canem  dominumque  benignum. 

Poor  Irus'  faithful  wolf-dog  here  I  lie. 
That  wont  to  tend  my  old  blind  master's  steps. 
His  guide  and  guard  :  nor,  while  my  service  lasted. 
Had  he  occasion  for  that  staff,  with  which 
He  now  goes  picking  out  his  path  in  fear 
Over  the  highways  and  crossings  ;  but  would  plant 
Safe  in  the  conduct  of  my  friendly  string, 
A  firm  foot  forward  still,  till  he  had  reach'd 
His  poor  seat  on  some  stone,  nigh  where  the  tide 
Of  passers  by  in  thickest  confluence  flow'd : 
To  whom  with  loud  and  passionate  laments 
From  morn  to  eve  his  dark  estate  he  wail'd. 
Nor  wail'd  to  all  in  vain :  some  here  and  there, 
The  well-disposed  and  good,  their  pennies  gave. 
I  meantime  at  his  feet  obsequious  slept ; 
Not  all-asleep  in  sleep,  but  heart  and  ear 
Prick'd  up  at  his  least  motion  ;  to  receive 
At  his  kind  hand  my  customary  crumbs. 
And  common  portion  in  his  feast  of  scraps ; 
,       Or  when  night  warn'd  us  homeward,  tired  and  spent 
With  our  long  day  and  tedious  beggary. 

These  were  my  manners,  this  my  way  of  life. 
Till  age  and  slow  disease  me  overtook, 
And  sever'd  from  my  sightless  master's  side. 
But  lest  the  grace  of  so  good  deeds  should  die. 
Through  tract  of  years  in  mute  oblivion  lost. 
This  slender  tomb  of  turf  hath  Irus  reared. 
Cheap  monument  of  no  ungrudging  hand, 
And  with  short  verse  inscribed  it,  to  attest, 
In  long  and  lasting  union  to  attest. 
The  virtues  of  the  Beggar  and  his  Dog. 


A  COMPLAINT  OF  THE  DECAY  OF  BEGGARS.  153 

These  dim  eyes  have  in  vain  explored  for  some  months  past  a 
well-known  figure,  or  part  of  the  figure  of  a  man,  who  used  to 
glide  his  comely  upper  half  over  the  pavements  of  London,  wheel- 
ing along  with  most  ingenious  celerity  upon  a  machine  of  wood  ; 
a  spectacle  to  natives,  to  foreigners,  and  to  children.  He  was  of 
a  robust  make,  with  a  florid  sailor-like  complexion,  and  his  head 
was  bare  to  the  storm  and  sunshine.  He  was  a  natural  curiosity, 
a  speculation  to  the  scientific,  a  prodigy  to  the  simple.  The  in- 
fant would  stare  at  the  mighty  man  brought  down  to  his  own  level. 
The  common  cripple  would  despise  his  own  pusillanimity,  view- 
ing the  hale  stoutness,  and  hearty  heart,  of  this  half-limbed  giant. 
Few  but  must  have  noticed  him  ;  for  the  accident,  which  brought 
him  low,  took«place  during  the  riots  of  1780,  and  he  has  been  a 
groundling  so  long.  He  seemed  earth-born,  an  Antaeus,  and  to 
suck  in  fresh  vigor  from  the  soil  which  he  neighbored.  He  was  a 
grand  fragment ;  as  good  as  an  Elgin  marble.  The  nature,  which 
should  have  recruited  Lis  reft  legs  and  thighs,  was  not  lost,  but 
only  retired  into  his  upper  parts,  and  he  was  half  a  Hercules. 
I  heard  a  tremendous  voice  thundering  and  growling,  as  before 
an  earthquake,  and  casting  down  my  eyes,  it  was  this  mandrake 
reviling  a  steed  that  had  started  at  his  portentous  appearance.  He 
seemed  to  want  but  his  just  stature  to  have  rent  the  offending 
quadruped  in  shivers.  He  was  as  the  man-part  of  a  centaur, 
from  which  the  horse-half  had  been  cloven  in  some  dire  Lapithan 
controversy.  He  moved  on,  as  if  he  could  have  made  shift  with 
yet  half  of  the  body-portion  which  was  left  him.  The  os  sitblime 
was  not  wanting ;  and  he  threw  out  yet  a  jolly  countenance  upon 
the  heavens.  Forty-and-two  years  had  he  driven  this  out-of-door 
trade,  and  now  that  his  hair  is  grizzled  in  the  service,  but  his  good 
spirits  no  way  impaired,  because  he  is  not  content  to  exchange 
his  free  air  and  exercise  for  the  restraints  of  a  poor-house,  he  is 
expiating  his  contumacy  in  one  of  those  houses  (ironically  chris- 
tened) of  Correction. 

Was  a  daily  spectacle  like  this  to  be  deemed  a  nuisance,  which 
called  for  legal  interference  to  remove  ?  or  not  rather  a  salutary 
and  a  touching  object,  to  the  passers-by  in  a  great  city  ?  Among 
her  shows,  her  museums,  and  supplies  for  ever-gaping  curiosity 
(and  what  else  but  an  accumulation  of  sights — endless  sights — 


154  ELIA. 

is  a  great  city  ;  or  for  what  else  is  it  desirable  ?)  was  there  not 
room  for  one  Lusus  (not  NaturcR,  indeed,  but)  Accidentium? 
What  if  in  forty-and-two  years'  going  about,  the  man  had  scraped 
together  enough  to  give  a  portion  to  his  child  (as  the  rumor  ran), 
of  a  few  hundreds — whom  had  he  injured  ? — whom  had  he  im- 
posed upon  ?  The  contributors  had  enjoyed  their  sight  for  their 
pennies.  What  if  after  being  exposed  all  day  to  the  heats,  the 
rains,  and  the  frosts  of  heaven — shuffling  his  ungainly  trunk 
along  in  an  elaborate  and  painful  motion — he  was  enabled  to  retire 
at  night  to  enjoy  himself  at  a  club  of  his  fellow  cripples  over  a 
dish  of  hot  meat  and  vegetables,  as  the  charge  was  gravely 
brought  against  him  by  a  clergyman  deposing  before  a  House  of 
Commons'  Committee — was  this,  or  was  his  truly  paternal  consi- 
deration, which  (if  a  fact)  deserved  a  statue  rather  than  a  whip- 
ping-post, and  is  inconsistent  at  least  with  the  exaggeration  of 
nocturnal  orgies  which  he  has  been  slandered  with — a  reason  that 
he  should  be  deprived  of  his  chosen,  harmless,  nay  edifying,  way 
of  life,  and  be  committed  in  hoary  age  for  a  sturdy  vagabond  ? — 

There  was  a  Yorick  once,  whom  it  would  not  have  shamed  to 
have  sate  down  at  the  cripples'  feast,  and  to  have  thrown  in  his 
benediction,  ay,  and  his  mite  too,  for  a  companionable  symbol. 
"  Age,  thou  hast  lost  thy  breed." — 

Half  of  these  stories  about  the  prodigious  fortunes  made  by 
begging  are  (I  verily  believe)  misers'  calumnies.  One  was  much 
talked  of  in  the  public  papers  some  time  since,  and  the  usual 
charitable  inferences  induced.  A  clerk  in  the  Bank  was  sur- 
prised with  the  announcement  of  a  five-hundred-pound  legacy 
left  him  by  a  person  whose  name  he  was  a  stranger  to.  It  seems 
that  in  his  daily  morning  walks  from  Peckham  (or  some  village 
thereabouts)  where  he  lived,  to  his  office,  it  had  been  his  practice 
for  the  last  twenty  years  to  drop  his  halfpenny  duly  into  the  hat 
^f  some  blind  Bartimeus,  that  sate  begging  alms  by  the  way-side 
'.n  the  Borough.  The  good  old  beggar  recognized  his  daily  bene- 
factor by  the  voice  only  ;  and,  when  he  died,  left  all  the  aniassings 
of  his  alms  (that  had  been  half  a  century  perhaps  in  the  accumu- 
lating) to  his  old  Bank  friend.  Was  this  a  story  to  purse  up 
people's  hearts,  and  pennies,  against  giving  an  alms  to  the  blind  ?— 


A  COMPLAINT  OF  THE  DECAY  OF  BEGGARS.  155 

or  not  rather  a  beautiful  moral  of  well-directed  charity  on  the 
one  part,  and  noble  gratitude  upon  the  other  ? 

I  sometimes  wish  I  had  been  that  Bank  clerk. 

I  seem  to  remember  a  poor  old  grateful  kind  of  creature,  blink- 
ing, and  looking  up  with  his  no  eyes  in  the  sun — 

Is  it  possible  I  could  have  Steele^  my  purse  against  him  ? 

Perhaps  I  had  no  small  change. 

Reader,  do  not  be  frightened  at  the  hard  words,  imposition,  im- 
posture— give,  and  ask  no  questions.  Cast  thy  bread  upon  the 
waters.  Some  have  unawares  (like  this  Bank  clerk)  entertained 
angels. 

Shut  not  thy  purse-strings  always  against  painted  distress. 
Act  a  charity  sometimes.  When  a  poor  creature  (outwardly  and 
visibly  such)  comes  before  thee,  do  not  stay  to  inquire  whether 
the  "  seven  small  children,"  in  whose  name  he  implores  thy  as- 
sistance, have  a  veritable  existence.  Rake  not  into  the  bowels 
of  unwelcome  truth,  to  save  a  halfpenny.  It  is  good  to  believe 
him.  If  he  be  not  all  that  he  pretendeth,  give,  and  under  a  per- 
sonate father  of  a  family,  think  (if  thou  pleasest)  that  thou  hast 
relieved  an  indigent  bachelor.  When  they  come  with  their  coun- 
terfeit looks,  and  mumping  tones,  think  them  players.  You  pay 
your  money  to  see  a  comedian  feign  these  things,  which,  concern- 
ing these  poor  people,  thou  canst  not  certainly  tell  whether  they 
are  feigned  or  not. 


156  ELI  A. 


A  DISSERTATION  UPON  ROAST  PIG. 


Mankind,  says  a  Chinese  manuscript,  which  my  friend  M.  was 
obliging  enough  to  read  and  explain  to  me,  for  the  first  seventy 
thousand  ages  ate  their  meat  raw,  clawing  or  biting  it  from  the 
living  animal,  just  as  they  do  in  Abyssinia  to  this  day.  This 
period  is  not  obscurely  hinted  at  by  their  great  Confucius  in  the 
second  chapter  of  his  Mundane  Mutations,  where  he  designates  a 
kind  of  golden  age  by  the  term  of  Cho-fang,  literally  the  Cooks' 
Holiday.  The  manuscript  goes  on  to  say,  that  the  art  of  roast- 
ing, or  rather  broiling  (which  I  take  to  be  the  elder  brother)  was 
accidentally  discovered  in  the  manner  following.  The  swine- 
herd, Ho-ti,  having  gone  out  into  the  woods  one  morning,  as  his 
manner  was,  to  collect  mast  for  his  hogs,  left  his  cottage  in  the 
care  of  his  eldest  son  Bo-bo,  a  great  lubberly  boy,  who  being  fond 
of  playing  with  fire,  as  younkers  of  his  age  commonly  are,  let 
some  sparks  escape  into  a  bundle  of  straw,  which  kindling  quick- 
ly, spread  the  conflagration  over  every  part  of  their  poor  mansion, 
till  it  was  reduced  to  ashes.  Together  with  the  cottage  (a  sorry 
antediluvian  make-shift  of  a  building,  you  may  think  it)  what  was 
of  much  more  importance,  a  fine  litter  of  new-farrowed  pigs,  no 
less  than  nine  in  number,  perished.  China  pigs  have  been  es- 
teemed a  luxury  all  over  the  East,  from  the  remotest  periods  that 
we  read  of.  Bo-bo  was  in  the  utmost  consternation,  as  you  may 
think,  not  so  much  for  the  sake  of  the  tenement,  which  his  father 
and  he  could  easily  build  up  again  with  a  few  dry  branches,  and 
the  labor  of  an  hour  or  two,  at  any  time,  as  for  the  loss  of  the  pigs. 
While  he  was  thinking  what  he  should  say  to  his  father,  and 
wringing  his  hands  over  the  smoking  remnants  of  one  of  those  un- 
timely sufferers,  an  odor  assailed  his  nostrils,   unlike  any  scent 


A  DISSERTATION  UPON  ROAST  PIG.  157 

which  he  had  before  experienced.  What  could  it  proceed  from  ? 
— not  from  the  burnt  cottage — he  had  smelt  that  smell  before — 
indeed  this  was  by  no  means  the  first  accident  of  the  kind  which 
had  occurred  through  the  negligence  of  this  unlucky  young  fire- 
brand. Much  less  did  it  resemble  that  of  any  known  herb,  weed, 
or  flower.  A  premonitory  moistening  at  the  same  time  overflowed 
his  nether  lip.  He  knew  not  what  to  think.  He  next  stooped 
down  to  feel  the  pig,  if  there  were  any  signs  of  life  in  it.  He 
burnt  his  fingers,  and  to  cool  them  he  applied  them  in  his  booby 
fashion  to  his  mouth.  Some  of  the  crumbs  of  the  scorched  skin 
had  come  away  with  his  fingers,  and  for  the  first  time  in  his  life 
(in  the  world's  life  indeed,  for  before  him  no  man  had  known  it) 
he  tasted — crackling  !  Again  he  felt  and  fumbled  at  the  pig.  It 
did  not  burn  him  so  much  now,  still  he  licked  his  fingers  from  a 
sort  of  habit.  The  truth  at  length  broke  into  his  slow  understand- 
ing, that  it  was  the  pig  that  smelt  so,  and  the  pig  that  tasted  so 
delicious  ;  and  surrendering  himself  up  to  the  new-born  pleasure, 
he  fell  to  tearing  up  whole  handfuUs  of  the  scorched  skin  with  the 
flesh  next  it,  and  was  cramming  it  down  his  throat  in  his  beastly 
fashion,  when  his  sire  entered  amid  the  smoking  rafters,  armed 
with  retributory  cudgel,  and*  finding  how  aflairs  stood,  began  to 
rain  blows  upon  the  young  rogue's  shoulders,  as  thick  as  hail- 
stones, which  Bo-bo  heeded  not  any  more  than  if  they  had  been 
flies.  The  tickling  pleasure,  which  he  experienced  in  his  lower 
regions,  had  rendered  him  quite  callous  to  any  inconveniences  he 
might  feel  in  those  remote  quarters.  His  father  might  lay  on, 
but  he  could  not  beat  him  from  his  pig,  till  he  had  fairly  made  an 
end  of  it,  when,  becoming  a  little  more  sensible  of  his  situation, 
something  like  the  following  dialogue  ensued. 

"  You  graceless  whelp,  what  have  you  got  there  devouring  ? 
Is  it  not  enough  that  you  have  burnt  me  down  three  houses  with 
•  your  dog's  tricks,  and  be  hanged  to  you  !  but  you  must  be  eating 
fire,  and  I  know,  not  what — what  have  you  got  there  I  say  ?" 

"  O  father,  the  pig,  the  pig  \  do  come  and  taste  how  nice  the 
►^urnt  pig  eats." 

The  ears  of  Ho-ti  tingled  with  horror.  He  cursed  his  son,  and 
he  cursed  himself  that  ever  he  should  beget  a  son  that  should  eat 
burnt  pig. 


158  ELI  A. 

Bo-bd,  whose  scent  was  wonderfully  sharpened  since  morning, 
soon  raked  out  another  pig,  and  fairly  rending  it  asunder,  thrust 
the  lesser  half  by  main  force  into  the  fists  of  Ho-ti,  ^ill  shouting 
out,  "  Eat,  eat,  eat  the  burnt  pig,  father,  only  taste^O  LordPy 
— with  such-like  barbarous  ejaculations,  cramming  all  the  wHUe 
as  if  he  would  choke. 

Ho-ti  trembled  in  every  joint  while  he  grasped  the  abominable 
thing,  wavering  whether  he  should  not  put  his  son  to  death  for  an 
unnatural  young  monster,  when  the  crackling  scorching  his  fingers, 
as  it  had  done  his  son's,  and  applying  the  same  remedy  to  them, 
he  in  his  turn  tasted  some  of  its  flavor,  which,  make  what  sour 
mouths  he  would  for  a  pretence,  proved  not  altogether  displeasing 
to  him.  In  conclusion  (for  the  manuscript  here  is  a  little  tedious) 
both  father  and  son  fairly  sat  down  to  the  mess,  and  never  left  off 
till  they  had  despatched  all  that  remained  of  the  litter. 

Bo-bo  was  strictly  enjoined  not  to  let  the  secret  escape,  for  the 
neighbors  would  certainly  have  stoned  them  for  a  couple  of  abo- 
minable wretches,  who  could  think  of  improving  upon  the  good 
meat  which  God  had  sent  them.  Nevertheless,  strange  stories 
get  about.  It  was  observed  that  Ho-ti's  cottage  was  burnt  down 
now  more  frequently  than  ever.  Nothing  but  fires  from  this  time 
forward.  Some  would  break  out  in  broad  day,  others  in  the 
night-time.  As  often  as  the  sow  farrowed,  so  sure  was  the  house 
of  Ho-ti  to  be  in  a  blaze  ;  and  Ho-ti  himself,  which  was  the  more 
remarkable,  instead  of  chastising  his  son,  seemed  to  grow  more 
indulgent  to  him  than  ever.  At  length  they  were  watched,  the 
terrible  mystery  discovered,  and  father  and  son  summoned  to  take 
their  trial  at  Pekin,  then  an  inconsiderable  assize  town.  Evi- 
dence was  given,  the  obnoxious  food  itself  produced  in  court,  and 
verdict  about  to  be  pronounced,  when  the  foreman  of  the  jury- 
begged  that  some  of  the  burnt  pig,  of  which  the  culprits  stood  ac- 
cused, might  be  handed  into  the  box.  He  handled  it,  and  they 
all  handled  it ;  and  burning  their  fingers,  as  Bo-bo  and  his  father 
had  done  before  them,  and  nature  prompting  to  each  of  them  the 
same  remedy,  against  the  face  of  all  the  facts,  and  the  clearest 
charge  which  judge  had  ever  given, — to  the  surprise  of  the  whole 
court,  townsfolk,  strangers,  reporters,  and  all  present — without 


A  DISSERTATION  UPON  ROAST  #IG.  159 

leaving  the  box,  or  any  manner  of  consultation  whatever,  they 
brought  in  a  simultaneous  verdict  of  Not  Guilty. 

The  judge,  who  was  a  shrewd  fellow,  winked  at  the  manifest 
iniquity  of  the  decision  :  and  when  the  court  was  dismissed,  went 
privily,  and  bought  up  all  the  pigs  that  could  be  had  for  love  or 
nloney.  In  a  few  days  his  Lordship's  town-house  was  observed 
to  be  on  fire.  The  thing  took  wing,  and  now  there  was  notliing 
to  be  seen  but  fire  in  every  direction.  Fuel  and  pigs  grew  enor- 
mously  dear  all  over  the  district.  The  insurance-offices  one  and 
all  shut  up  shop.  People  built  slighter  and  slighter  every  day, 
until  it  was  feared  that  the  very  science  of  architecture  would  in 
no  long  time  be  lost  to  the  world.  Thus  this  custom  of  firing 
houses  continued,  till  in  process  of  time,  says  my  manuscript,  a 
sage  arose,  like  our  Locke,  who  made  a  discovery,  that  the  flesh 
of  swine,  or  indeed  of  any  other  animal,  might  be  cooked  {hurntf 
as  they  called  it)  without  the  necessity  of  consuming  a  whole 
house  to  dress  it.  Then  first  began  the  rude  form  of  a  gridiron. 
Roasting  by  the  string  or  spit  came  in  a  century  or  two  later,  I 
forget  in  whose  dynasty.  By  such  slow  degrees,  concludes  the 
manuscript,  do  the  most  useful,  and  seemingly  the  most  obvious 
arts,  make  their  way  among  mankind 

Without  placing  too  implicit  faith  in  the  account  above  given, 
it  must  be  agreed,  that  if  a  worthy  pretext  for  so  dangerous  an 
experiment  as  setting  houses  on  fire  (especially  in  these  days) 
could  be  assigned  in  favor  of  any  culinary  object,  that  pretext 
and  excuse  might  be  found  in  roast  pig. 

Of  all  the  delicacies  in  the  whole  mundus  edibilis,  I  will  main- 
tain  it  to  be  the  most  delicate — ^rinceps  ohsoniorum. 

I  speak  not  of  your  grown  porkers — things  between  pig  and 
pork — those  hobbydehoys — but  a  young  and  tender  suckling— 
under  a  moon  old — guiltless  as  yet  of  the  sty — with  no  original 
speck  of  the  amor  immunditice,  the  hereditary  failing  of  the  first 
parent,-3cet  manifest — his  voice  as  yet  not  broken,  but  something 
between  a  childish  treble  and  a  grumble — the  mild  forerunner, 
or  pmludium  of  a  grunt. 

He  must  he  roasted.  I  am  not  ignorant  that  our  ancestors  ate 
them  seethed;  or  boiled — but  what  a  sacrifice  of  the  exterior 
tegument ! 


160  •  ELI  A. 

There  is  no  flavor  comparable,  I  will  contend,  to  that  of  the 
crisp,  tawny,  well- watched,  not  over- roasted,  crackling,  as  it  is 
well  called — ^the  very  teeth  are  invited  to  their  share  of  the  plea- 
sure at  this  banquet  in  overcoming  the  coy,  brittle  resistance — 
with  the  adhesive  oleaginous — O  call  it  not  fat !  but  an  indefin- 
able sweetness  growing  up  to  it — the  tender  blossoming  of  fat — 
fat  cropped  in  the  bud — ^taken  in  the  shoot — in  the  first  innocence 
— the  cream  and  quintessence  of  the  child-pig's  yet  pure  food 

the  lean,  no  lean,  but  a  kind  of  animal  manna — or,  rather, 

fat  and .  lean  (if  it  must  be  so)  so  blended  and  running  into  each 
other,  that  both  together  make  but  one  ambrosian  result,  or  com- 
mon substance. 

Behold  him,  while  he  is  "  doing" — it  seemeth  rather  a  refresh- 
ing warmth,  than  a  scorching  heat,  that  he  is  so  passive  to.  How 
equably  he  twirleth  round  the  string  ! — Now  he  is  just  done.  To 
see  the  extreme  sensibility  of  that  tender  age !  he  hath  wept  out 
his  pretty  eyes — radiant  jellies — shooting  stars. — 

See  him  in  the  dish  his  second  cradle,  how  meek  he  lieth ! — 
wouldst  thou  have  had  this  innocent  grow  up  to  the  grossness  and 
indocility  which  too  often  accompany  matprer  swinehood  ?  Ten 
to  one  he  would  have  proved  a  glutton,v^sloveny  an  obstinate, 
disagreeable  animal— -(sKalk) wing  in  all  manner  of  filthy  conversa- 
tion]—from  these  sins  he  is  happily  snatched  away — 

Ere  sin  could  blight  or  sorrow  fade 
Death  came  with  timely  care—  0 

his  memory  is  odoriferous — no  clown  curseth,  while  his  stomach 
half  rejecteth,  the  rank  bacon — no  coalheaver  bolteth  him  in 
reeking  sausages — he  hath  a  fair  sepulchre  in  the  grateful  stom- 
ach of  the  judicious  epicure — and  for  such  a  tomb  might  be  con- 
tent to  die. 

He  is  the  best  of  sapors.  Pine-apple  is  great.  She  is  indeed 
almost  too  transcendant — a  delight,  if  not  sinful,  yet  so  like  to 
sinning  that  really  a  tender-oonscienced  person  would  do  well  to 
pause — too  ravishing  for  mortal  taste,  she  woundeth  and  ex- 
coriateththe  lips  that  approach  her — like  lovers'  kisses,  she  biteth 
— she  is  a  pleasure  bordering  on  pain  from  the  fierceness  and  in- 
sanity of  her  relish — but  she  stoppeth  at  the  palate — she  med- 


A  DISSERTATION  UPON  ROAST  PIG.  161 

dleth  not  with  the  appetite — and  the  coarsest  hunger  might 
barter  her  consistently  for  a  mutton  chop. 

Pig — let  me  speak  his  praise — is  no  less  provocative  of  the 
appetite,  than  he  is  satisfactory  to  the  criticalness  of  the  censorious 
palate.  The  strong  man  may  batten  on  him,  and  the  weakling 
refuseth  not  his  mild  juices. 

Unlike  to  mankind's  mixed  characters,  a  bundle  of  virtues  and 
vices,  inexplicably  intertwisted,  and  not  to  be  unravelled  without 
hazard,  he  is  good  throughout.  No  part,  of  him  is  better  or 
worse  than  another.  He  helpeth,  as  far  as  his  little  means  ex- 
tend, all  around.  He  is  the  least  envious  of  banquets.  He  is 
all  neighbors'  fare. 

I  am  one  of  those,  who  freely  and  ungrudgingly  impart  a  share 
of  the  good  things  of  this  life  which  fall  to  their  lot  (few  as  mine 
are  in  this  kind)  to  a  friend.  I  protest  I  take  as  great  an  interest 
in  my  friend's  pleasures,  his  relishes,  and  proper  satisfactions,  as 
in  mine  own.  "Presents,"  I  often  say,  "endear  Absents." 
Hares,  pheasants,  partridges,  snipes,  barn-door  chickens  (those 
"tame  villatic  fowl  "),  capons,  plovers,  brawn,  barrels  of  oysters, 
I  dispense  as  freely  as  I  receive  them.  I  love  to  taste  them,  as 
it  were,  upon  the  tongue  of  my  friend.     But  a  stop  must  be  put 

Cmewhere.  One  would  not,  like  Lear,  "  give  everything."  I 
ake  my  stand  upon  pig.  Methinks  it  is  an  ingratitude  to  the 
Giver  of  all  good  flavors,  to  extra-domiciliate,  or  send  out  of  the 
house,  slightingly  (under  pretext  of  friendship,  or  I  know  not 
what),  a  blessing  so  particularly  adapted,  predestined,  I  may  say, 
to  my  individual  palate — It  argues  an  insensibility. 

I  remember  a  touch  of  conscience  in  this  kind  at  school.  My 
good  old  aunt,  who  never  parted  from  me  at  the  end  of  a  holiday 
without  stuffing  a  sweetmeat,  or  some  nice  thing,  into  my  pocket, 
had  dismissed  me  one  evening  with  a  smoking  plum-cake,  fresh 
from  the  oven.  In  my  way  to  school  (it  was  over  London  bridge) 
a  grey-headed  old  beggar  saluted  me  (I  have  no  doubt,  at  this 
time  of  day,  that  he  was  a  counterfeit).  I  had  no  pence  to  con- 
sole him  with,  and  in  the  vanity  of  self-denial,  and  the  very  cox- 
combry of  charity,  schoolboy-like,  I  made  him  a  present  of — the 
whole  cake !     I  walked  on  a  little,  buoyed  up,  as  one  is  on  such 

PART  I.  12 


102  ELI  A 

occasions,  with  a  sweet  soothing  of  self-satisfaction  ;  but  before 
I  had  got  to  the  end  of  the  bridge,  my  better  feelings  returned, 
and  I  burst  into  tears,  thinking  how  ungrateful  I  had  been  to  my 
good  aunt,  to  go  and  give  her  good  gift  away  to  a  stranger  that  I 
had  never  seen  before,  and  who  might  be  a  bad  man  for  aught  I 
knew :  and  then  I  thought  of  the  pleasure  my  aunt  would  be 
taking  in  thinking  that  I — I  myself,  and  not  another — would  eat 
her  nice  cake — and  what  should  I  say  to  her  the  next  time  I  saw 
her — how  naughty  I  was  to  part  with  her  pretty  present ! — and 
the  odor  of  that  spicy  cake  came  back  upon  my  recollection,  and 
the  pleasure  and  the  curiosity  I  had  taken  in  seeing  her  make  it, 
and  her  joy  when  she  sent  it  to  the  oven,  and  how  disappointed 
she  would  feel  that  I  had  never  had  a  bit  of  it  in  my  mouth  at 
last — and  I  blamed  my  impertinent  spirit  of  alms-giving,  and 
out-of-place  hypocrisy  of  goodness ;  and  above  all  I  wished  never 
to  see  the  face  again  of  that  insidious,  good-for-nothing,  old  grey 
impostor. 

Our  ancestors  were  nice  in  their  method  of  sacrificing  those 
tender  victims.  We  read  of  pigs  whipt  to  death  with  something 
of  a  shock,  as  we  hear  of  any  obsolete  custom.  The  age  of  dis- 
cipline is  gone  by,  or  it  would  be  curious  to  inquire  (in  a  philo- 
sophical light  merely)  what  effect  this  process  might  have  towards 
intenerating  and  dulcifying  a  substance,  naturally  so  mild  and  ^ 
dulcet  as  the  flesh  of  young  pigs.  It  looks  like  refining  a  violet. 
Yet  we  should  be  cautious,  while  we  condemn  the  inhumanity, 
how  we  censure  the  wisdom  of  the  practice.  It  might  impart  a 
gusto. — 

I  remember  an  hypothesis,  argued  upon  by  the  young  students, 
when  I  was  at  St.  Omer's,  and  maintained  with  much  learning 
and  pleasantry  on  both  sides,  "  Whether,  supposing  that  tne  fla- 
vor of  a  pig  who  obtained  his  death  by  whipping  ( per  jlagella- 
tionem  extremam)  superadded  a  pleasure  upon  the  palate  of  a  man 
more  intense  than  any  possible  suffering  we  can  conceive  in  the 
animal,  is  man  justified  in  using  that  method  of  putting  the  ani- 
mal to  death  ?"     I  forget  the  decision. 

His  sauce  should  be  considered.  Decidedly,  a  few  bread 
crumbs,  done  up  with  his  liver  and  brains,  and  a  dash  of  mild 


A  DISSERTATION  UPON  ROAST  PIG.  163 

sage.  But  banish,  dear  Mrs.  Cook,  I  beseech  you,  the  whole 
onion  tribe.  Barbecue  your  whole  hogs  to  your  palate",  steep 
them  in  shalots,  stuff  them  out  with  plantations  of  the  rank  and 
guilty  garlic ;  you  cannot  poison  them,  or  make  them  stronger 
than  they  are — but  consider,  he  is  a  weakling — a  flower. 


164  ELIA. 


A  BACHEIOR'S  COMPLAINT 

OF 

THE   BEHAVIOR   OF    MARRIED    PEOPLE. 


As  a  single  man,  I  have  spent  a  good  deal  of  my  time  in  noting 
down  the  infirmities  of  Married  People,  to  console  myself  for 
those  superior  pleasures,  which  they  tell  me  I  have  lost  by  re- 
maining as  I  am. 

I  cannot  say  that  the  quarrels  of  men  and  their  wives  ever 
made  any  great  impression  upon  me,  or  had  much  tendency  to 
strengthen  me  in  those  anti-social  resolutions,  which  I  took  up 
long  ago  upon  more  substantial  considerations.  What  oftenest 
offends  me  at  the  houses  of  married  persons  where  I  visit,  is  an 
error  of  quite  a  different  description;  it  is  that  they  are  too 
loving. 

Not  too  loving  neither :  that  does  not  explain  my  meaning. 
Besides,  why  should  that  offend  me  ?  The  very  act  of  separating 
themselves  from  the  rest  of  the  world,  to  have  the  fuller  enjoy- 
ment of  each  other's  society,  implies  that  they  prefer  one  another 
to  all  the  world. 

But  what  I  complain  of  is,  that  they  carry  this  preference  so 
undisguisedly,  they  perk  it  up  in  the  faces  of  us  single  people  so 
shamelessly,  you  cannot  be  in  their  company  a  moment  without 
being  made  to  feel,  by  some  indirect  hint  or  open  avowal,  that  you 
are  not  the  object  of  this  preference.  Now  there  are  some  things 
which  give  no  offence,  while  implied  or  taken  for  granted  merely  ; 
but  expressed,  there  is  much  offence  in  them.  If  a  man  were  to 
accost  the  first  homely-featured  or  plain-dressed  young  woman  of 


A  BACHELOR'S  COMPLAINT.  165 

his  acquaintance,  and  tell  herMuntly,  that  she  was  not  handsome 
or  rich  enough  for  him,  and  he  could  not  marry  her,  he  would 
deserve  to  be  kicked  for  his  ill  manners  ;  yet  no  less  is  implied 
in  the  fact,  that  having  access  and  opportunity  of  putting  the 
que^on  to  her,  he  has  never  yet  thought  fit  to  do  it.  The  young 
woman  understands  this  as  clearly  as  if  it  were  put  into  words ; 
but  no  reasonable  young  woman  would  think  of  making  this  the 
ground  of  a  quarrel.  Just  as  little  right  have  a  married  couple 
to  tell  me  by  speeches,  and  looks  that  are  scarce  less  plain  than 
speeches,  that  I  am  not  the  happy  man — the  lady's  choice.  It  is 
enough  that  I  know  that  I  am  not :  I  do  not  want  this  perpetual 
reminding. 

The  display  of  superior  knowledge  or  riches  may  be  made  suf- 
ficiently mortifying  ;  but  these  admit  of  a  palliative.  The  know- 
ledge which  is  brought  out  to  insult  me,  may  accidentally  improve 
me ;  and  in  the  rich  man's  houses  and  pictures,  his  parks  and 
gardens,  I  have  a  temporary  usufruct  at  least.  But  the  display 
of  married  happiness  has  none  of  these  palliatives  ;  it  is  through- 
out pure,  unrecompensed,  unqualified  insult. 

Marriage  by  its  best  title  is  a  monopoly,  and  not  of  the  least 
invidious  sort.  It  is  the  cunning  of  most  possessors  of  any  exclu- 
sive privilege  to  keep  their  advantage  as  much  out  of  sight  as 
possible,  that  their  less  favored  neighbors,  seeing  little  of  the  bene- 
fit, may  be  less  disposed  to  question  the  right.  But  these  mar- 
ried monopolists  thrust  the  most  obnoxious  part  of  their  patent 
into  our  faces. 

Nothing  is  to  me  more  distasteful  than  that  entire  complacency 
and  satisfaction  which  beam  in  the  countenances  of  a  new- mar- 
ried couple — in  that  of  the  lady  particularly  ;  it  tells  you,  that 
her  lot  is  disposed  of  in  this  world  :  that  you  can  have  no  hopes 
of  her.  It  is  true,  I  have  none ;  nor  wishes  either,  perhaps  ;  but 
this  is  one  of  those  truths  which  ought,  as  I  said  before,  to  be 
taken  for  granted^  not  expressed. 

The  excessive  airs  which  those  people  give  themselves,  founded 
on  the  ignorance  of  us  unmarried  people,  would  be  more  offen- 
sive if  they  were  less  irrational.  We  will  allow  them  to  under- 
stand the  mysteries  belonging  to  their  own  craft  better  than  we, 
who  have  not  had  the  happiness  to  be  made  free  of  the  company  : 


166  ELIA. 

but  their  arrogance  is  not  content  within  these  limits.  If  a  single 
person  presume  to  offer  his  opinion  in  their  presence,  though  upon 
the  most  indifferent  subject,  he  is  immediately  silenced  as  an  in- 
competent person.  Nay,  a  young  married  lady  of  my  acquaint- 
ance, who,  the  best  of  the  jest  was,  had  not  changed  her  condi- 
tion above  a  fortnight  before,  in  a  question  on  which  I  had  the 
misfortune  to  differ  from  her,  respecting  the  properest  mode  of 
breeding  oysters  for  the  London  market,  had  the  assurance  to  ask 
with  a  sneer,  how  such  an  old  Bachelor  as  I  could  pretend  to 
know  anything  about  such  matters  ! 

But  wbat  I  have  spoken  of  hitherto  is  nothing  to  the  airs  which 
these  creatures  give  themselves  when  they  come,  as  they  gene- 
rally do,  to  have  children.  When  I  consider  how  little  of  a  rarity 
children  are — that  every  street  and  blind  alley  swarms  with 
them — ^that  the  poorest  people  commonly  have  them  in  most  abun- 
dance— that  there  are  few  marriages  that  are  not  blest  with  at 
least  one  of  these  bargains — how  often  they  turn  out  ill,  and  de- 
feat the  fond  hope  of  their  parents,  taking  to  vicious  courses, 
which  end  in  poverty,  disgrace,  the  gallows,  &c.,  I  cannot  for 
my  life  tell  what  cause  for  pride  there  can  possibly  be  in  having 
them.  If  they  were  young  phoenixes,  indeed,  that  were  born 
but  one  in  a  year,  there  might  be  a  pretext.  But  when  they  are 
so  common 


I  do  not  advert  to  the  insolent  merit  which  they  assume  with 
their  husbands  on  these  occasions.  Let  them  look  to  that.  But' 
why  we,  who  are  not  their  natural-born  subjects,  should  be  ex- 
pected to  bring  our  spices,  myrrh,  and  incense — our  tribute  and 
homage  of  admiration — I  do  not  see. 

"  Like  as  the  arrows  in  the  hand  of  the  giant,  even  so  are  the 
young  children :"  so  says  the  excellent  office  in  our  Prayer-book 
appointed  for  the  churching  of  women.  "  Happy  is  the  man  that 
hath  his  quiver  full  of  them  :"  So  say  I ;  but  then  don't- let  him 
discharge  his  quiver  upon  us  that  are  weaponless ;  let  them  be 
arrows,  but  not  to  gall  and  stick  us.  I  have  generally  observed 
that  these  arrows  are  double-headed :  they  have  two  forks,  to  be 
sure  to  hit  with  one  or  the  other.  As  for  instance,  where  you 
come  into  a  house  which  is  full  of  children,  if  you  happen  to 
take  no  notice  of  them  (you  are  thinking  of  something  else,  per- 


A  BACHELOR'S  COMPLAINT.  167 

haps,  and  turn  a  deaf  ear  to  their  innocent  caresses),  you  are  set 
down  as  untractable,  morose,  a  hater  of  children.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  you  find  them  more  than  usually  engaging — if  you  are 
taken  with  their  pretty  manners,  and  set  about  in  earnest  to  romp 
and  play  with  them,  some  pretext  or  other  is  sure  to  be  found  for 
sending  them  out  of  the  room  ;  they  are  too  noisy  or  boisterous, 

or  Mr. does  not  like  children.     With  one  or  other  of  these 

forks  the  arrow  is  sure  to  hit  you. 

I  could  forgive  their  jealousy,  and  dispense  with  toying  with 
their  brats,  if  it  gives  them  any  pain  ;  but  I  think  it  unreasonable 
to  be  called  upon  to  love  them,  where  I  see  no  occasion — to  love 
a  whole  family,  perhaps  eight,  nine,  or  ten  indiscriminately — to 
love  all  the  pretty  dears,  because  children  are  so  engaging  ! 

I  know  there  is  a  proverb,  "  Love  me,  love  my  dog  :"  that  is 
not  always  so  very  practicable,  particularly  if  the  dog  be  set  upon 
you  to  tease  you  or  snap  at  you  in  sport.  But  a  dog,  or  a  lesser 
thing — any  inanimate  substance,  as  a  keepsake,  a  watch  or  a  ring, 
a  tree,  or  the  place  where  we  last  parted  when  my  friend  went 
away  upon  a  long  absence,  I  can  make  shift  to  love,  because  I 
love  him,  and  anything  that  reminds  me  of  him,  provided  it  be  in 
its  nature  indifferent,  and  apt  to  receive  whatever  hue  fancy  can 
give  it.  But  children  have  a  real  character,  and  an  essential  be- 
ing of  themselves  :  they  are  amiable  or  unamiable  per  se ;  I 
must  love  or  hate  them,  as  I  see  cause  for  either  in  their  quali- 
ties. A  child's  nature  is  too  serious  a  thing  to  admit  of  its  being 
regarded  as  a  mere  appendage  to  another  being,  and  to  be  loved 
or  hated  accordingly  :  they  stand  with  me  upon  their  own  stock, 
as  much  as  men  and  women  do.  Oh !  but  you  will  say,  sure  it 
is  an  attractive  age — there  is  something  in  the  tender  years  of 
infancy  that  of  itself  charms  us  1  That  is  the  very  reason  why 
I  am  more  nice  about  them.  I  know  that  a  sweet  child  is  the 
sweetest  thing  in  nature,  not  even  excepting  the  delicate  crea- 
tures which  bear  them  ;  but  the  prettier  the  kind  of  a  thing  is, 
the  more  desirable  it  is  that  it  should  be  pretty  of  its  kind.  One 
daisy  differs  not  much  from  another  in  glory  ;  but  a  violet  should 
look  and  smell  the  daintiest.  I  was  always  rather  squeamish  in 
my  women  and  children. 

But  this  is  not  the  worst :  one  must  be  admitted  into  their  fami« 


168  ELI  A. 

liarity  at  least,  before  they  can  complain  of  inattention.  It  implies 
visits,  and  some  kind  of  intercourse.  But  if  the  husband  be  a  man 
with  whom  you  have  lived  on  a  friendly  footing  before  marriage 
— if  you  did  not  come  in  on  the  wife's  side — if  you  did  not  sneak 
into  the  house  in  her  train,  but  were  an  old  friend  in  fast  habits 
of  intimacy  before  their  courtship  was  so  much  as  thought  on, — 
look  about  you — your  tenure  is  precarious — before  a  twelvemonth 
shall  roll  over  your  head,  you  shall  find  your  old  friend  gradually 
grow  cool  and  altered  towards  you,  and  at  last  seek  opportunities 
of  breaking  with  you.  I  have  scarce  a  married  friend  of  my  ac- 
quaintance, upon  whose  firm  faith  I  can  rely,  whose  friendship 
did  not  commence  after  the  period  of  his  marriage.  With  some 
limitations,  they  can  endure  that ;  but  that  the  good  man  should 
have  dared  to  enter  into  a  solemn  league  of  friendship  in  which 
they  were  not  consulted,  though  it  happened  before  they  knew 
him, — before  they  that  are  now  man  and  wife  ever  met, — this  is 
intolerable  to  them.  Every  long  friendship,  every  old  authentic 
intimacy,  must  be  brought  into  their  office  to  be  new  stamped 
with  their  currency,  as  a  sovereign  prince  calls  in  the  good  old 
money  that  was  coined  in  some  reign  before  he  was  born  or 
thought  of,  to  be  new  marked  and  minted  with  the  stamp  of  his 
authority,  before  he  will  let  it  pass  current  in  the  world.  You 
may  guess  what  luck  generally  befalls  such  a  rusty  piece  of 
metal  as  I  am  in  these  new  mintings. 

Innumerable  are  the  ways  which  they  take  to  insult  and  worm 
you  out  of  their  husbands'  confidence.  Laughing  at  all  you  say 
with  a  kind  of  wonder,  as  if  you  were  a  queer  kind  of  fellow  that 
said  good  things,  hut  an  oddity,  is  one  of  the  ways ; — they  have  a 
particular  kind  of  stare  for  the  purpose  ; — till  at  last  the  husband, 
who  used  to  defer  to  your  judgment,  and  would  pass  over  some 
excrescences  of  understanding  and  manner  for  the  sake  of  a  gene- 
ral vein  of  observation  (not  quite  vulgar)  which  he  perceived  in 
you,  begins  to  suspect  whether  you  are  not  altogether  a  humorist, 
— a  fellow  well  enough  to  have  consorted  with  in  his  bachelor 
days,  but  not  quite  so  proper  to  be  introduced  to  ladies.  This 
may  be  called  the  staring  way ;  and  is  that  which  has  oftenest 
been  put  in  practice  against  me. 

Then  there  is  the  exaggerating  way,  or  the  way  of  irony ;  that 


A  BACHELOR'S  COMPLAINT.  169 

is,  where  they  find  you  an  object  of  especial  regard  with  their 
husband,  who  is  not  so  easily  to  be  shaken  from  the  lasting  attach- 
ment founded  on  esteem  which  he  has  conceived  towards  you,  by 
never  qualified  exaggerations  to  cry  up  all  thai  you  say  or  do,  till 
the  good  man,  who  understands  well  enough  that  it  is  all  done  in 
compliment  to  him,  grows  weary  of  the  debt  of  gratitude  which  i:J 
due  to  so  much  candor,  and  by  relaxing  a  little  on  his  part,  and 
taking  down  a  peg  or  two  in  his  enthusiasm,  sinks  at  length  to  the 
kindly  level  of  moderate  esteem — ^that  "  decent  affection  and  com- 
placejE^  kindness  "  towards  you,  where  she  herself  can  join  in 
sympathy  with  him  without  much  stress  and  violence  to  her 
sincerity. 

Another  way  (for  the  ways  they  have  to  accomplish  so  desira- 
ble a  purpose  ane  infinite)  is,  with  a  kind  of  innocent  simplicity, 
continually  to  mistake  what  it  was  which  first  made  their  husband 
foid  of  you.  If  an  esteem  for  something  excellent  in  your  moral 
character  was  that  which  riveted  the  chain  which  she  is  to  break, 
upon  any  imaginary  discovery  of  a  want  of  poignancy  in  your 
conversation,  she  will  cry,  "  I  thought,  my  dear,  you  described 

your  friend,  Mr. ,  as  a  great  wit  ?"     If,  on  the  other  hand, 

it  was  for  some  supposed  cha^'m  in  your  conversation  that  he  first 
grew  to  like  you,  and  was  content  for  this  to  overlook  some  trifling 
irregularities  in  your  moral  deportment,  upon  the  first  notice  of 
any  of  these  she  as  readily  exclaims,  "  This,  my  dear,  is  your 
good  Mr. !"  One  good  lady  whom  I  took  the  liberty  of  ex- 
postulating with  for  not  showing  me  quite  so  much  respect  as  I 
thought  due  to  her  husband's  old  friend,  had  the  candor  to  confess 
to  me  that  she  had  often  heard  Mr. speak  of  me  before  mar- 
riage, and  that  she  had  conceived  a  great  desire  to  be  acquainted 
with  me,  but  that  the  sight  of  me  had  very  much  disappointed  her 
expectations ;  for  from  her  husband's  representations  of  me,  she 
had  formed  a  notion  that  she  was  to  see  a  fine,  tall  officer-like- 
looking  man  (I  use  her  very  words),  the  very  reverse  of  which 
proved  to  be  the  truth.  This  was  candid ;  and  I  had  the  civility 
not  to  ask  her  in  return,  how  she  came  to  pitch  upon  a  standard 
of  personal  accomplishments  for  her  husband's  friends  which  dif. 
fered  so  much  from  his  own ;  for  my  friend's  dimensions  as  near 
as  possible  approximate  to  mine ;  he  standing  five  feet  five  in  his 


170  ELI  A. 

shoes,  in  which  I  have  the  advantage  of  him  by  about  half  an 
inch ;  and  he  no  more  than  myself  exhibiting  any  indications  of  a 
martial  character  in  his  air  or  countenance. 

These  are  some  of  the  mortifications  which  I  have  encountered 
in  the  absurd  attempt  to  visit  at  their  houses.  To  enumerate  them 
all  would  be  a  vain  endeavor ;  I  shall  therefore  just  glance  at  the 
very  common  impropriety  of  which  married  ladies  are  guilty, — 
of  treating  us  as  if  we  were  their  husbands,  and  vice  versa.  I 
mean,  when  they  use  us  with  familiarity,  and  their  httsbands  with 
ceremony.  Testacea,  for  instance,  kept  me  the  other  night  two 
or  three  hours  beyond  my  usual  time  of  supping,  while  she  was 

fretting  because  Mr. did  not  come  home,  till  the  oysters 

were  all  spoiled,  rather  than  she  would  be  guilty  of  the  impolite- 
ness of  touching  one  in  his  absence.  This  was  reversing  the 
point  of  good  manners  ;  for  ceremony  is  an  invention  to  take  off 
the  uneasy  feeling  which  we  derive  from  knowing  ourselves  to  be 
less  the  object  of  love  and  esteem  with  a  fellow-creature  than 
some  other  person  is.  It  endeavors  to  make  up,  by  superior  at- 
tentions in  little  points,  for  that  invidious  preference  which  it  is 
forced  to  deny  in  the  greater.  Had  Testacea  kept  the  oysters 
back  for  me,  and  withstood  her  husband's  importunities  to  go  to 
supper,  she  would  have  acted  according  to  the  strict  rules  of  pro- 
priety. I  know  no  ceremony  that  ladies  are  bound  to  observe  to 
their  husbands,  beyond  the  point  of  a  modest  behavior  and  deco- 
rum :  therefore  I  must  protest  against  the  vicarious  gluttony  of 
Cerasia,  who  at  her  own  table  sent  away  a  dish  of  Morellas,  which 
I  was  applying  to  with  great  good-will,  to  her  husband  at  the 
other  end  of  the  table,  and  recommended  a  plate  of  less  extraordi- 
nary gooseberries  to  my  un wedded  palate  in  their  stead.  Neither 
can  I  excuse  the  wanton  affront  of 

But  I  am  weary  of  stringing  up  all  my  married  acquaintance 
by  Roman  denominations.  Let  them  amend  and  change  their 
manners,  or  I  promise  to  record  the  full-length  English  of  their 
names,  to  the  terror  of  all  siich  desperate  offenders  in  future. 


ON  SOME  OF  THE  OLD  ACTORS.  171 


ON  SOME  OF  THE  OLD  ACTORS 


The  casual  sight  of  an  old  Play  Bill,  which  I  picked  up  the  other 
day — I  know  not  by  what  chance  it  was  preserved  so  long — 
tempts  me  to  call  to  mind  a  few  of  the  Players,  who  make  the 
principal  figure  in  it.  It  presents  the  cast  of  parts  of  the  Twelfth 
Night,  at  the  old  Drury-lane  Theatre  two-and-thirty  years  ago. 
There  is  something  very  touching  in  these  old  remembrances. 
They  make  us  think  how  we  once  used  to  read  a  Play  Bill — not, 
as  now  peradventure,  singling  out  a  favorite  performer,  and  cast- 
ing a  negligent  eye  over  the  rest;  but  spelling  out  every  name, 
down  to  the  very  mutes  and  servants  of  the  scene  ; — when  it  was 
a  matter  of  no  small  moment  to  us  whether  Whitfield,  or  Packer, 
took  the  part  of  Fabian  ;  when  Benson,  and  Burton,  and  Philli- 
more — names  of  small  account — had  an  importance,  beyond  what 
we  can  be  content  to  attribute  now  to  the  time's  best  actors. — 
"  Orsino,  by  Mr.  Barrymore." — What  a  full  Shakspearian  sound 
it  carries  !  how  fresh  to  memory  arise  the  image,  and  the  manner, 
of  the  gentle  actor ! 

Those  who  have  only  seen  Mrs.  Jordan  within  the  last  ten  or 
fifteen  years,  can  have  no  adequate  notion  of  her  performance 
of  such  parts  as  Ophelia  ;  Plelena,  in  All's  Well  that  Ends  Well ; 
and  Viola  in  this  play.  Her  voice  had  latterly  acquired  a  coarse- 
ness, which  suited  well  enough  with  her  Nells  and  Hoydens,  but 
in  those  days  it  sank,  with  her  steady  melting  eye,  into  the  heart. 
■  Her  joyous  parts — in  which  her  memory  now  chiefly  lives — ^in 
her  youth  were  outdone  by  her  plaintive  ones.  There  is  no  giv- 
ing an  account  how  she  delivered  the  disguised  story  of  her  love 
for  Orsino.  It  was  no  set  speech,  that  she  had  foreseen,  so  as  to 
weave  it  into  an  harmonious  period,  line  necessarily  following 


172  ELTA. 

— « 

line,  to  make  up  the  music — ^yet  I  have  heard  it  so  spoken,  or 
rather  read,  not  without  its  grace  and  beauty — but,  when  she  had 
declared  her  sister's  history  to  be  a  "  blank,''  and  that  she  "  never 
told  her  love,"  there  was  a  pause,  as  if  the  story  had  ended — and 
then  the  image  of  the  "  worm  in  the  bud,"  came  up  as  a  new 
suggestion — and  the  heightened  image  of  "  Patience"  still  followed 
after  that,  as  by  some  growing  (and  not  mechanical)  process, 
thought  springs  up  after  thought,  I  would  almost  say,  as  they 
were  watered  by  her  tears.     So  in  those  fine  lines — 

Write  loyal  cantos  of  contemned  love — 
Halloo  your  name  to  the  reverberate  hills — 

there  was  no  preparation  made  in  the  foregoing  image  for  that 
which  was  to  follow.  She  used  no  rhetoric  in  her  passion ;  or  it 
was  nature's  own  rhetoric,  most  legitimate  then,  when  it  seemed 
altogether  without  rule  or  law. 

Mrs.  Powel  (now  Mrs.  Renard),  then  in  the  pride  of  her  beauty, 
made  an  admirable  Olivia.  She  was  particularly  excellent  in  her 
unbending  scenes  in  conversation  with  the  Clown.  I  have  seen 
some  Olivias — and  those  very  sensible  actresses  too — who  in  these 
interlocutions  have*  seemed  to  set  their  wits  at  the  jester,  and  to 
vie  conceits  with  him  in  downright  emulation.  But  she  used 
him  for  her  sport,  like  what  he  was,  to  trifle  a  leisure  sentence  or 
two  with,  and  then  to  be  dismissed,  and  she  to  be  the  Great  Lady 
Btill.  She  touched  the  imperious  fantastic  humor  of  the  charac- 
ter with  nicety.     Her  fine  spacious  person  filled  the  scene. 

The  part  of  Malvolio  has,  in  my  judgment,  been  so  often  mis- 
understood, and  the  general  merits  of  the  actor,  who  then  played 
it,  so  unduly  appreciated,,  that  I  shall  hope  for  pardon,  if  I  am  a 
little  prolix  upon  these  points. 

Of  all  the  actors  who  flourished  in  my  time — a  melancholy 
phrase  if  taken  aright,  reader — Bensley  had  most  of  the  swell  of 
soul,  was  greatest  in  the  delivery  of  heroic  conceptions,  the  emo- 
tions consequent  upon  the  presentment  of  a  great  idea  to  the 
fancy.  He  had  the  true  poetical  enthusiasm — the  rarest  faculty 
among  players.  None  that  I  remember  possessed  even  a  portion 
of  that  fine  madness  which  he  threw  out  in  Hotspur's  famous  rant 
about  glory,  or  the  transports  of  the  Venetian  incendiary  at  the 


ON  SOME  OF  THE  OLD  ACTORS.  173 

vision  of  the  fired  city.     His  voice  had  the  dissonance,  and  at  times 
the  inspiriting  effect,  of  the  trumpet.     His  gait  was  uncouth  and 
stiff,  but  no  way  embarrassed  by  affectation ;  and  the  through-bred 
gentleman  was  uppermost  in  every  movement.     He  seized  the 
moment  of  passion  with  greatest  truth ;  like  a  faithful  clock,  never 
striking  before  the  time  ;  never  anticipating  or  leading  you  to 
anticipate.     He  was  totally  destitute  of  trick  and  artifice.     He 
seemed  come  upon  the  stage  to  do  the  poet's  message  simply,  and 
he  did  it  with  as  genuine  fidelity  as  the  nuncios  in  Homer  deliver 
the  errands  of  the  gods.     He  let  the  passion  or  the  sentiment  do 
its  own  work  without  prop  or  bolstering.     He  would  have  scorned 
to  mountebank^  it ;  and  betrayed  none  of  that  cleverness  which  is 
the  bane  of  serious  acting.     For  this  reason,  his  lago  was  the 
only  endurable  one  I  remember  to  have  seen.     No  spectator  from 
his  action  could  divine  more  of  his  artifice  than  Othello  was 
supposed  to  do.     His  confessions  in  soliloquy  alone  put  you  in 
possession  of  the   mystery.     There  were  no   by-intimations  to 
make  the  audience  fancy  their  own  discernment  so  much  greater 
than  that  of  the  Moor — who  commonly  stands  like  a  great  helpless 
mark  set  up  for  mine  Ancient,  and  a  quantity  of  barren  specta- 
tors, to  shoot  their  bolts  at.     The  lago  of  Bensley  did  not  go  to 
work  so  grossly.     There  was  a  triumphant  tone  about  the  char- 
acter, natural  to  a  general  consciousness  of  power ;  but  none  of 
that  petty  vanity  which  chuckles  and  cannot  contain  itself  upon 
any  little  successful  stroke  of  its  knavery — as  is  common  with 
your  small  villains,  and  green  probationers  in  mischief.     It  did 
not  clap  or  crow  before  its  time.     It  was  not  a  man  setting  his 
wits  at  a  child,  and  winking  all  the  while  at  other  children  who 
are  mightily  pleased  at  being  let  into  the  secret ;  but  a  consum- 
mate villain  entrapping  a  noble  nature  into  toils,  against  which 
no  discernment  was  available,  where  the  manner  was  as  fathom- 
less as  the  purpose  seemed  dark,  and  without  motive.     The  part 
of  Malvolio,  in  the  Twelfth  Night,  was  performed  by  Bensley, 
with  a  richness  and  a  dignity,  of  which  (to  judge  from  some  re- 
cent castings  of  that  character)  the  very  tradition  must  be  worn 
out  from   the  stage.     No  manager  in  those  days  would   have 
dreamed  of  giving  it  to   Mr.  Baddeley,  or  Mr.  Parsons :  when 
Bensley  was  occasionally  absent  from  the  theatre,  John  Kemble 


*■ 


174  ELI  A. 

thought  it  no  derogation  to  succeed  to  the  part.  Malvolio  is  not 
essentially  ludicrous.  He  becomes  comic  but  by  accident.  He 
is  cold,  austere,  repelling;  but  dignified,  consistent,  and,  for  what 
appears,  rather  of  an  over-stretched  morality.  Maria  describes 
him  as  a  sort  of  Puritan ;  and  he  might  have  worn  his  gold  chain 
with  honor  in  one  of  our  old  round-head  families,  in  the  service 
of  a  Lambert,  or  a  Lady  Fairfax.  But  his  morality  and  his. 
manners  are  misplaced  in  lUyria.  He  is  opposed  to  the  proper 
levities  of  the  piece,  and  falls  in  the  unequal  contest.  Still  his 
pride,  or  his  gravity  (call  it  which  you  will),  is  inherent,  and 
native  to  the  man,  not  mock  or  affected,  which  latter  only  are  the 
fit  objects  to  excite  laughter.  His  quality  is  at  the  best  unlovely, 
but  neither  buffoon  nor  contemptible.  His  bearing  is  lofty,  a  lit- 
tle above  his  station,  but  probably  not  much  above  his  deserts. 
We  see  no  reason  why  he  should  not  have  been  brave,  honorable, 
accomplished.  His  careless  committal  of  the  ring  to  the  ground 
(which  he  was  commissioned  to  restore  to  Cesario),  bespeaks  a 
generosity  of  birth  and  feeling.  His  dialect  on  all  occasions  is  that 
of  a  gentleman,  and  a  man  of  education.  We  must  not  confound 
him  with  the  eternal  old  low  steward  of  comedy.  He  is  master 
of  the  household  to  a  great  princess ;  a  dignity  probably  conferred 
upon  him  for  other  respects  than  age  or  length  of  service.  Olivia, 
at  the  first  indication  of  his  supposed  madness,  declares  that  she 
"  would  not  have  him  miscarry  for  half  of  her  dowry."  Does 
this  look  as  if  the  character  was  meant  to  appear  little  or  insigni- 
ficant !  Once,  indeed,  she  accuses  him  to  his  face — of  what  ? — 
of  being  "  sick  of  self-love," — but  with  a  gentleness  and  consider- 
ateness  which  could  not  have  been,  if  she  had  not  thought  that 
this  particular  infirmity  shaded  some  virtues.  His  rebuke  to  the 
knight,  and  his  sottish  revellers,  is  sensible  and  spirited ;  and 
when  we  take  into  consideration  the  unprotected  condition  of  his 
mistress,  and  the  strict  regard  with  which  her  state  of  real  or  dis- 
sembled mourning  would  draw  the.  eyes  of  the  world  upon  her 
house-affairs,  Malvolio  might  feel  the  honor  of  the  family  in  some 
sort  in  his  keeping  ;  as  it  appears  not  that  Olivia  had  any  more 
brothers,  or  kinsmen,  to  look  to  it — for  Sir  Toby  had  dropped  all 
such  nice  respects  at  the  buttery-hatch.  That  Malvolio  was 
meant  to  be  represented  as  possessing  estimable  qualities,  the  ex- 


ON  SOME  OF  THE  OLD  ACTORS.  175 

pression  of  the  Duke,  in  his  anxiety  to  have  him  reconciled, 
almost  infers  :  "  Pursue  him,  and  entreat  him  to  a  peace."  Even 
in  his  abused  state  of  chains  and  darkness,  a  sort  of  greatness 
seems  never  to  desert  him.  He  argues  highly  and  well  with  the 
supposed  Sir  Topas,  and  philosophizes  gallantly  upon  his  straw.* 
There  must  have  been  some  shadow  of  worth  about  the  man  ;  he 
must  have  been  someth^jg  more  than  a  mere  vapor — a  thing  of 
straw,  or  Jack  in  office — before  Fabian  and  Maria  could  have 
ventured  sending  him  upon  a  courting-errand  to  Olivia.  There 
was  some  consonancy  (as  he  would  say)  in  the  undertaking,  or 
the  jest  would  have  been  too  bold  even  for  that  house  of  misrule. 
Bensley,  accordingly,  threw  over  the  part  an  air  of  Spanish 
loftiness.  He  looked,  spake,  and  moved  like  an  old  Castilian. 
He  was  starch,  spruce,  opinionated,  but  his  superstructure  of  pride 
seemed  bottomed  upon  a  sense  of  worth.  There  was  something 
in  it  beyond  the  coxcomb.  It  was  big  and  swelling,  but  you  could 
not  be  sure  that  it  was  hollow.  You  might  wish  to  see  it  taken 
down,  but  you  felt  that  it  was  upon  an  elevation.  He  was  mag- 
nificent from  the  outset ;  but  when  the  decent  sobrieties  of  the 
character  began  to  give  way,  and  the  poison  of  self-love,  in  his 
conceit  of  the  Countess's  affection,  gradually  to  work,  you  would 
have  thought  that  the  hero  of  La  Mancha  in  person  stood  before 
you.  How  he  went  smiling  to  himself!  with  what  ineffable  care- 
lessness would  he  twirl  his  gold  chain  !  what  a  dream  it  was  ! 
you  were  infected  with  the  illusion,  and  did  not  wish  that  it  should 
be  removed !  you  had  no  room  for  laughter  !  if  an  unseasonable 
reflection  of  morality  intruded  itself,  it  was  a  deep  sense  of  the 
pitiable  infirmity  of  man's  nature,  that  can  lay  him  open  to  such 
frenzies — but  in  truth  you  rather  admired  than  pitied  the  lunacy 
while  it  lasted.  You  felt  that  an  hour  of  such  mistake  was  worth 
an  age  with  the  eyes  open.  Who  would  not  wish  to  live  but  for 
a  day  in  the  conceit  of  such  a  lady's  love  as  Olivia  ?  Why,  the 
Duke  would  have  given  his  principality  but  for  a  quarter  of  a 
minute,  sleeping  or  waking,  to  have  been  so  deluded.     The  man 

*  Clown.     What  is  the  opinion  of  Pythagoras  concerning  wild  fowl  ? 
Mai.     That  the  soul  of  our  grandam  might  haply  inhabit  a  bird. 
Clown.     What  thinkest  thou  of  his  opinion  ? 
Mai.     I  think  nobly  of  the  soul,  and  no  way  approve  of  his  opinion. 


176  ELIA. 

seemed  to  tread  upon  air,  to  taste  manna,  to  walk  with  his  head  in 
the  clouds,  to  mate  Hyperion.  O  !  shake  not  the  castles  of  his 
pride — endure  yet  for  a  season,  bright  moments  of  confidence — 
"  stand  still,  ye  watches  of  the  element,"  that  Malvolio  may  be 
still  in  fancy  fair  Olivia's  lord ! — but  fate  and  retribution  say  no 
— I  hear  the  mischievous  titter  of  Maria — the  witty  taunts  of  Sir 
Toby — the  still  more  insupportable  triumph  of  the  foolish  knight 
— the  counterfeit  Sir  Topas  is  unmasked  and  "  thus  the  whirli- 
gig of  time,"  as  the  true  clown  hath  it,  "  brings  in  his  revenges." 
I  confess  that  I  never  saw  the  catastrophe  of  this  character,  while 
Bensley  played  it,  without  a  kind  of  tragic  interest.  There  was 
good  foolery  too.  Few  now  remember  Dodd.  What  an  Ague- 
cheek  the  stage  lost  in  him !  Lovegrove,  who  came  nearest  to 
the  old  actors,  revived  the  character  some  few  seasons  ago,  and 
made  it  sufficiently  grotesque ;  but  Dodd  was  it,  as  it  came  out  of 
nature's  hands.  It  might  be  said  to  remain  in  purls  naturalibus. 
In  expressing  slowness  of  apprehension,  this  actor  surpassed  all 
others.  You  could  see  the  first  dawn  of  an  idea  stealing  slowly 
over  his  countenance,  climbing  up  by  little  and  little,  with  a  pain- 
ful process,  ^11  it  cleared  up  at  last  to  the  fullness  of  a  twilight 
conception — its  highest  meridian.  He  seemed  to  keep  back  his 
intellect,  as  some  have  had  the  power  to  retard  their  pulsation. 
The  balloon  takes  less  time  in  filling,  than  it  took  to  cover  the 
expansion  of  his  broad  moony  face  over  all  its  quarters  with  ex- 
pression. A  glimmer  of  understanding  would  appear  in  a  cor- 
ner of  his  eye,  and  for  lack  of  fuel  go  out  again.  A  part  of  his 
forehead  would  catch  a  little  intelligence,  and  be  a  long  time  in 
communicating  it  to  the  remainder. 

I  am  ill  at  dates,  but  I  think  it  is  now  better  than  five-and- 
twenty  years  ago,  that  walking  in  the  gardens  of  Gray's  Inn — 
they  were  then  far  finer  than  they  are  now — the  accursed  Veru- 
1am  Buildings  had  not  encroached  on  all  the  east  side  of  them, 
cutting  out  delicate  green  crankles,  and  shouldering  away  one  of 
two  of  the  stately  alcoves  of  the  terrace — ^the  survivor  stands  gap- 
ing and  relationless  as  if  it  remembered  its  brother — they  are  still 
the  best  gardens  of  any  of  the  Inns  of  Court,  my  beloved  Tem- 
ple not  forgotten — have  the  gravest  character,  their  aspect  being 
altogether  reverent  and  lawbreathing — Bacon  has  left  the  impress 


ON  SOME  OF  THE  OLD  ACTORS.  177 

of  his  foot  upon  their  gravel  walks — taking  my  afternoon  solace 
on  a  summer  day  upon  the  aforesaid  terrace,  a  comely  sad  per- 
sonage came  toward  me,  whom,  from  his  grave  air  and  deportment, 
I  judged  to  be  one  of  the  old  Benchers  of  the  Inn.  He  had  a  se- 
rious thoughtful  forehead,  and  seemed  to  be  in  meditations  of  mor- 
tality. As  I  have  an  instinctive  awe  of  old  Benchers,  I  was  pass- 
ing him  with  that  sort  of  subindicative  token  of  respect  which  one 
is  apt  to  demonstrate  towards  a  venerable  stranger,  and  which 
rather  denotes  an  inclination  to  greet  him,  than  any  positive  mo- 
tion of  the  body  to  that  effect — a  species  of  humility  and  will- 
worship  which  I  observe,  nine  times  out  of  ten,  rather  puzzles 
than  pleases  the  person  it  is  offered  to — when  the  face  turning 
full  upon  me,  strangely  identified  itself  with  that  of  Dodd.  Upon 
close  inspection  I  was  not  mistaken.  But  could  this  sad  thought- 
ful countenance  be  the  same  vacant  face  of  folly  which  I  had 
hailed  so  often  under  circumstances  of  gaiety ;  which  I  had  never 
seen  without  a  smile,  or  recognized  but  as  the  usher  of  mirth ; 
that  look^  out  so  formally  flat  in  Foppington,  so  frothily  pert  in 
Tattle,  so  impotently  busy  in  Backbite  ;  so  blankly  divested  of  all 
meaning,  or  resolutely  expressive  of  none,  in  Acres,  in  Fribble, 
and  a  thousand  agreeable  impertinences  ?  Was  this  the  face — 
full  of  thought  and  carefulness — that  had  so  often  divested  itself 
at  will  of  every  trace  of  either  to  give  me  diversion,  to  clear  my 
cloudy  face  for  two  or  three  hours  at  least  of  its  furrows  ?  Was 
this  the  face — manly,  sober,  intelligent — which  I  had  so  often 
despised,  made  mocks  at,  made  merry  with  ?  The  remembrance 
of  the  freedoms  which  I  had  taken  with  it  came  upon  me  with  a 
reproach  of  insult.  I  could  have  asked  it  pardon.  I  thought  it 
looked  upon  me  with  a  sense  of  injury.  There  is  something 
strange  as  well  as  sad  in  seeing  actors — your  pleasant  fellows  par- 
ticularly— subjected  to  and  suffering  the  common  lot ; — their  for- 
tunes, their  casualties,  their  deaths,  seem  to  belong  to  the  scene, 
their  actions  to  be  amenable  to  poetic  justice  only.  We  can 
hardly  connect  them  with  more  awful  responsibilities.  The  death 
of  this  fine  actor  took  place  shortly  after  this  meeting.  He  had 
quitted  the  stage  some  months ;  and,  as  I  learned  afterwards,  had 
been  in  the  habit  of  resorting  daily  to  these  gardens  almost  to  the 
day  of  his  decease.  In  these  serious  walks  probably  he  was  di- 
PART  I.  13 


17S  ELIA. 

vesting  himself  of  many  scenic  and  some  real  vanities — weaning 
himself  from  the  frivolities  of  the  lesser  and  the  greater  theatre — 
doing  gentle  penance  for  a  life  of  no  very  reprehensible  fooleries 
— taking  off  by  degrees  the  buffoon  mask  which  he  might  feel  he 
had  worn  too  long — and  rehearsing  for  a  more  solemn  cast  of  part. 
Dying,  he  "  put  on  the  weeds  of  Dominic."* 

If  few  can  remember  Dodd,  many  yet  living  will  not  easily 
forget  the  pleasant  creature,  who  in  those  days  enacted  the  part 
of  the  Clown  to  Dodd's  Sir  Andrew.  Richard,  or  rather  Dicky 
Suett — for  so  in  his  life-time  he  delighted  to  be  called,  and  time 
hath  ratified  the  appellation — lieth  buried  on  the  north  side  of  the 
cemetery  of  Holy  Paul,  to  whose  service  his  nonage  and  tender 
years  were  dedicated.  There  are  who  do  yet  remember  him 
at  that  period — his  pipe  clear  and  harmonious.  He  would  often 
speak  of  his  chorister  days,  when  he  was  "  cherub  Dicky." 

What  clipped  his  wings,  or  made  it  expedient  that  he  should 
exchange  the  holy  for  the  profane  state  ;  whether  he  had  lost  his 
good  voice  (his  best  recommendation  to  that  office),  like  Sir  John, 
"with  hallooing  and  singing  of  anthems;"  or  whether  he  was 
adjudged  to  lack  something,  even  in  those  early  years,  of  the 
gravity  indispensable  to  an  occupation  which  professeth  to  "  com- 
merce with  the  skies  " — I  could  never  rightly  learn  ;  but  we  find 
him,  after  the  probation  of  a  twelvemonth  or  so,  reverting  to  a 
secular  condition,  and  become  one  of  us. 

I  think  he  was  not  altogether  of  that  timber  out  of  which  cathe- 
dral seats  and  sounding-boards  are  hewed.  But  if  a  glad  heart 
— ^kind,  and  therefore  glad — be  any  part  of  sanctity,  then  might 
the  robe  of  Motley,  with  which  he  invested  himself  with  so  much 
humility  after  his  deprivation,  and  which  he  wore  so  long  with  so 

*  Dodd  was  a  man  of  reading,  and  had  left  at  his  death  a  choice  collection 
of  old  English  literature.  I  should  judge  him  to  have  been  a  man  of  wit. 
I  knew  one  instance  of  an  impromptu  which  no  length  of  study  could  have 
bettered.  My  merry  friend,  Jem  White,  had  seen  him  one  evening  in 
Aguecheek,  and  recognizing  Dodd  the  next  day  in  Fleet  street,  was  irre- 
sistibly impelled  to  take  off  his  hat  and  salute  him  as  the  identical  Knight 
of  the  preceding  evening  with  a  "  Save  you,  Sir  Andrew."  Dodd,  not  at 
all  disconcerted  at  this  unusual  address  from  a  stranger,  with  a  courteous 
half-rebuking  waive  of  the  hand,  put  him  off  with  an  "  Away,  Fool " 


ON  SOME  OF  THE  OLD  ACTORS.  179 

much  blameless  satisfaction  to  himself  and  to  the  public,  be  ac- 
cepted for  a  surplice — his  white  stole,  and  albe. 

The  first  fruits  of  his  secularization  was  an  engagement  upon 
the  boards  of  Old  Drury,  at  which  theatre  he  commenced,  as  I 
have  been  told,  with  adopting  the  name  of  Parsons  in  old  men's 
characters.  At  the  period  in  which  most  of  us  knew  him,  he  was 
no  more  an  imitator  than  he  was  in  any  true  sense,  himself  imita- 
ble. 

He  was  the  Robin  Goodfellow  of  the  stage.  He  came  in  to 
trouble  all  things  with  a  welcome  perplexity,  himself  no  whit 
troubled  for  the  matter.  He  was  known,  like  Puck,  by  his  note 
— Ha  !  Ha  !  Ha  ! — sometimes  deepening  to  Ho  !  Ho  !  Ho  ! 
with  an  irresistible  accession,  derived,  perhaps,  remotely  from  his 
ecclesiastical  education,  foreign  to  his  prototype  of, — O  La! 
Thousands  of  hearts  yet  respond  to  the  chuckling  O  La!  oi 
Dicky  Suett,  brought  back  to  their  remembrance  by  the  faithful 
transcript  of  his  friend  Mathews'  mimicry.  The  "  force  of  nature 
could  no  further  go."  He  drolled  upon  the  stock  of  these  two 
syllables  richer  than  the  cuckoo. 

Care,  that  troubled  all  the  world,  was  forgotten  in  his  compo- 
sition. Had  he  had  but  two  grains  (nay,  half  a  grain)  of  it,  he 
could  never  have  supported  himself  upon  those  two  spider's 
strings,  which  served  him  (in  the  latter  part  of  his  unmixed  ex- 
istence) as  legs.  A  doubt  or  scruple  must  have  made  him  totter, 
a  sigh  have  puffed  him  down  ;  the  weight  of  a  frown  had  stag- 
gered him,  a  wrinkle  made  him  lose  his  balance.  But  on  he 
went,  scrambling  upon  those  airy  stilts  of  his,  with  Robin  Good- 
fellow,  "  thorough  brake,  thorough  briar,"  reckless  of  a  scratched 
face  or  a  torn  doublet. 

Shakspeare  foresaw  him,  when  he  fram«d  his  fools  and  jesters. 
They  have  all  the  true  Suett  stamp,  a  loose  and  shambling  gait, 
a  slippery  tongue,  this  last  the  ready  midwife  to  a  without-pain- 
delivered  jest ;  in  words,  light  as  air,  venting  truths  deep  as  the 
centre  ;  with  idlest  rhymes  tagging  conceit  when  busiest,  singing 
with  Lear  in  the  tempest,  or  Sir  Toby  at  the  buttery  hatch. 

Jack  Bannister  and  he  had  the  fortune  to  be  more  of  personal 
favorites  with  the  town  than  any  actors  before  or  after.  The  dif- 
ference, I  take  it,  was  this : — ^Jack  was  more  beloved  for  his  sweet, 


180  ELIA. 

good-natured,  moral  pretensions.  Dicky  was  more  liked  for  his 
sweet,  good-natured,  no  pretensions  at  all.  Your  whole  con- 
science stirred  with  Bannister's  performance  of  Walter  in  the 
Children  in  the  Wood — ^but  Dicky  seemed  like  a  thing,  as  Shak- 
speare  says  of  Love,  too  young  to  know  what  conscience  is.  He 
put  us  into  Vesta's  days.  Evil  fled  before  him — not  as  from 
Jack,  as  from  an  antagonist, — but  because  it  could  not  touch  him, 
any  more  than  a  cannon-ball  a  fly.  He  was  delivered  from  the 
burthen  of  that  death ;  and,  when  Death  came  himself,  not  in 
metaphor,  to  fetch  Dicky,  it  is  recorded  of  him  by  Robert  Palmer, 
who  kindly  watched  his  exit,  that  he  received  the  last  stroke, 
neither  varying  his  accustomed  tranquillity,  nor  tune,  with  the 
simple  exclamation,  worthy  to  have  been  recorded  in  his  epitaph 
-^OLaf  OLaf  BoUy  ! 

The  elder  Palmer  (of  stage-treading  celebrity)  commonly 
played  Sir  Toby  in  those  days  ;  but  there  is  a  solidity  of  wit  in 
the  jests  of  that  half-FalstafF  which  he  did  not  quite  fill  out.  He 
was  as  much  too  showy  as  Moody  (who  sometimes  took  the  part) 
was  dry  and  sottish.  In  sock  or  buskin  there  was  an  air  of 
swaggering  gentility  about  Jack  Palmer.  He  was  a  gentleman 
with  a  slight  infusion  oHTie  footman.  His  brother  Bob  (of  recenter 
memory),  who  was  his  shadow  in  everything  while  he  lived,  and 
dwindled  into  less  than  a  shadow  afterwards — was  a  gentleman 
with  a  little  stronger  infusion  of  the  latter  ingredient ;  that  was  all. 
It  is  amazing  how  a  little  of  the  more  or  less  makes  a  difference 
in  these  things.  When  you  saw  Bobby  in  the  Duke's  Servant,* 
you  said,  '•  What  a  pity  such  a  pretty  fellow  was  only  a  servant !" 
When  you  saw  Jack  figuring  in  Captain  Absolute,  you  thought 
you  could  trace  his  promotion  to  some  lady  of  quality  who  fan- 
cied the  handsome  fellow  in  his  topknot,  and  had  bought  him  a 
commission.     Therefore  Jack  in  Dick  Amlet  was  insuperable. 

Jack  had  two  voices,  both  plausible,  hypocritical,  and  insinuat- 
ing ;  but  his  secondary  or  supplemental  voice  still  more  decisively 
histrionic  than  his  common  one.  It  was  reserved  for  the  specta- 
tor ;  and  the  dramatis  personee  were  supposed  to  know  nothing  at 
all  about  it.     The  lies  of  young  Wilding,  and  the  sentiments  in 

♦  High  Life  Below  Stairs 


ON  SOME  OF  THE  OLD  ACTORS.  ISl 

Joseph  Surface,  were  thus  marked  out  in  a  sort  of  italics  to  the 
audience.  This  secret  correspondence  with  the  company  before 
the  curtain  (which  is  the  bane  and  deatk  of  tragedy)  has  an  ex- 
tremely happy  effect  in  some  kinds-  of  comedy,  in  the  more  highly 
artificial  comedy  of  Congreve  or  of  Sheridan  especially,  where  the 
absolute  sense  of  reality  (so  indispensable  to  scenes  of  interest)  is 
not  required,  or  would  rather  interfere  to  diminish  your  pleasure. 
The  fact  is,  you  do  not  believe  in  such  characters  as  Surface — 
the  villain  of  artificial  comedy — even  while  you  read  or  see  them. 
If  you  did,  they  would  shock  and  not  divert  you.  When  Ben,  in 
Love  for  Love,  returns  from  sea,  the  following  exquisite  dialogue 
occurs  at  his  first  meeting  with  his  father  : — 

Sir  Sampson.  Thou  hast  been  many  a  weary  league,  Ben,  since  I  saw 
thee. 

Ben.  Ey,  ey,  been !  Been  far  enough,  and  that  be  all.— Well,  father, 
and  how  do  all  at  home  ?  how  docs  brother  Dick,  and  brother  Vail  ? 

Sir  Sampson.  Dick  !  body  o'  me,  Dick  has  been  dead  these  two  years. 
I  writ  you  word  when  you  were  at  Leghorn. 

£en.  Mess,  that's  true  ;  Marry,  I  had  forgot.  Dick's  dead,  as  you  say 
—Well,  and  how  ?— I  have  a  many  questions  to  ask  you— 

Here  is  an  instance  of  insensibility  which  in  real  life  would  be 
revolting,  or  rather  in  real  life  could  not  have  co-existed  with  the 
warm-hearted  temperament  of  the  character.  But  when  you  read  it 
in  the  spirit  with  which  such  playful  selections  and  specious  com- 
binations rather  than  strict  metaphrases  of  nature  should  be  taken, 
or  when  you  saw  Bannister  play  it,  it  neither  did,  nor  does,  wound 
the  moral  sense  at  all.  For  what  is  Ben — the  pleasant  sailor 
which  Bannister  gives  us — but  a  piece  of  satire — a  creation  of 
Congreve's  fancy — a  dreamy  combination  of  all  the  accidents  of 
a  sailor's  character — his  contempt  of  money — his  credulity  to 
women — with  that  necessary  estrangement  from  home  which  is 
just  within  the  verge  of  credibility  to  suppose  might  produce  such 
an  hallucination  as  is  here  described.  We  never  think  the  worse 
of  Ben  for  it,  or  feel  it  as  a  stain  upon  his  character.  But  when 
an  actor  comes,  and  instead  of  the  delightful  phantom — the  crea- 
ture dear  to  half-belief — which  Bannister  exhibited — displays  be- 
fore our  eyes  a  downright  concretion  of  a  Wapping  sailor — a 
jolly  warm-hearted  Jack  Tar — and  nothing  else — when  instead 


182  ELIA. 

of  investing  it  with  a  delicious  confusedness  of  the  head,  and  a 
veering  undirected  goodness  of  purpose — he  gives  to  it  a  down- 
right daylight  understanding,  and  a  full  consciousness  of  its  ac- 
tions ;  thrusting  forward  the  sensibilities  of  the  character  with  a 
pretence  as  if  it  stood  upon  nothing  else,  and  was  to  be  judged  by 
them  alone — we  feel  the  discord  of  the  thing ;  the  scene  is  dis- 
turbed ;  a  real  man  has  got  in  among  the  dramatis  personse,  and 
puts  them  out.  We  want  the  sailor  turned  out.  We  feel  that 
his  true  place  is  not  behind  the  curtain,  but  in  the  first  or  second 
gallery. 


%.» 


THE  ARTIFICIAL  COMEDY  OF  THE  LAST  CENTURY.     183 


ON  THE  ARTIFICIAL  COMEDY  OF  THE  LAST  CENTURY. 


The  artificial  Comedy,  or  Comedy  of  manners,  is  quite  extinct  on 
our  stage.  Congreve  and  Farquhar  show  their  heads  once  in 
seven  years  only,  to  be  exploded  and  put  down  instantly.  The 
times  cannot  bear  them.  Is  it  for  a  few  wild  speeches,  an  occa- 
sional licence  of  dialogue  ?  I  think  not  altogether.  The  business 
of  their  dramatic  characters  will  not  stand  the  moral  test.  We 
screw  everything  up  to  that.  Idle  gallantry  in  a  fiction,  a  dream, 
the  passing  pageant  of  an  evening,  startles  us  in  the  same  way  as 
the  alarming  indications  of  profligacy  in  a  son  or  ward  in  real  life 
should  startle  a  parent  or  guardian.  We  have  no  such  middle 
emotions  as  dramatic  interests  left.  We  see  a  stage  libertine 
playing  his  loose  pranks  of  two  hours'  duration,  and  of  no  after  con- 
sequence, with  the  severe  eyes  which  inspect  real  vices  with  their 
bearings  upon  two  worlds.  We  are  spectators  to  a  plot  or  intrigue 
(not  reducible  in  life  to  the  point  of  strict  morality),  and  take  it 
all  for  truth.  We  substitute  a  real  for  a  dramatic  person,  and 
judge  him  accordingly.  We  try  him  in  our  courts,  from  which 
there  is  no  appeal  to  the  dramatis  personcB,  his  peers.  We  have 
been  spoiled  with — not  sentimental  comedy — but  a  tyrant  far  more 
pernicious  to  our  pleasures  which  has  succeeded  to  it,  the  exclu- 
sive and  all-devouring  drama  of  common  life  ;  where  the  moral 
point  is  everything ;  where,  instead  of  the  fictitious  half-believed 
personages  of  the  stage  (the  phantoms  of  old  comedy),  we  recog- 
nize ourselves,  our  brothers,  aunts,  kinsfolk,  allies,  patrons, 
enemies, — the  same  as  in  life, — with  an  interest  in  what  is  going 
on  so  hearty  and  substantial,  that  we  cannot  afford  our  moral 
judgment,  in  its  deepest  and  most  vital  results,  to  compromise  or 
slumber  for  a  moment.     What  is  there  transacting,  by  no  modifi- 


184  ELIA. 

cation  is  made  to  affect  us  in  any  other  manner  than  the  same 
events  or  characters  would  do  in  our  relationships  of  life.  We 
carry  our  fire-side  concerns  to  the  theatre  with  us.  We  do  not  go 
thither,  like  our  ancestors,  to  escape  from  the  pressure  of  reality, 
so  much  as  to  confirm  our  experience  of  it ;  to  make  assurance 
double,  and  take  a  bond  of  fate.  We  must  live  our  toilsome  lives 
twice  over,  as  it  was  the  mournful  privilege  of  Ulysseis  to  descend 
twice  to  the  shades.  All  that  neutral  ground  of  character,  which 
stood  between  vice  and  virtue ;  or  which  in  fact  was  indifferent 
to  neither,  where  neither  properly  was  called  in  question ;  that 
happy  breathing-place  from  the  burden  of  a  perpetual  moral  ques- 
tioning— the  sanctuary  and  quiet  Alsatia  of  hunted  casuistry — is 
broken  up  and  disfranchised,  as  injurious  to  the  interests  of 
society.  The  privileges  of  the  place  are  taken  away  by  law. 
We  dare  not  dally  with  images,  or  names,  of  wrong.  We  bark 
like  foolish  dogs  at  shadows.  We  dread  infection  from  the  scenic 
representation  of  disorder,  and  fear  a  painted  pustule.  In  our 
anxiety  that  our  morality  should  not  take  cold,  we  wrap  it  up  in 
a  great  blanket  surtout  of  precaution  against  the  breeze  and  sun- 
shine. 

I  confess  for  myself  that  (with  no  great  delinquencies  to  answer 
for)  I  am  glad  for  a  season  to  take  an  airing  beyond  the  diocese 
of  the  strict  conscience, — not  to  live  always  in  the  precincts  of  the 
law-courts, — but  now  and  then,  for  a  dream- while  or  so,  to  imagine 
a  world  with  no  meddling  restrictions — ^to  get  into  recesses, 
whither  the  hunter  cannot  follow  me — 


Secret  shades 


Of  woody  Ida's  inmost  grove, 
While  yet  there  was  no  fear  of  Jove. 

I  come  back  to  my  cage  and  my  restraint  the  fresher  and  more 
healthy  for  it.  I  wear  my  shackles  more  contentedly  for  having 
respired  the  breath  of  an  imaginary  freedom.  I  do  not  know  how 
it  is  with  others,  but  I  feel  the  better  always  for  the  perusal  of  one 
of  Congreve's — nay,  why  should  I  not  add  even  of  Wycherley's — 
comedies.  I  am  the  gayer  at  least  for  it ;  and  I  could  never 
connect  those  sports  of  a  witty  fancy  in  any  shape  with  any  result 
to  be  drawn  from  them  to  imitation  in  real  life.     They  are  a 


iT 


THE  ARTIFICIAL  COMEDY  OF  THE  LAST  CENTURY.     185 

, :& 

world  of  themselves  alraosC^iis  much  as  iairy-land.  Take  one  of 
their  characters,  male  or  female  (with  few  exceptions  they  are 
alike),  and  place  it  in  a  modern  play,  and  my  virtuous  indignation 
shall  rise  against  the  profligate  wretch  as  wannly  as  the  Catos 
of  the  pit  could  desire ;  because  in  a  modern  play  I  am  to  judge  of 
the  right  and  the  wrong.  The  standard  of  police  is  the  measure  of 
political  justice.  The  atmosphere  will  blight  it,  it  cannot  live  here. 
It  has  got  into  a  moral  world,  where  it  has  no  business,  from 
which  it  must  needs  fall  headlong ;  as  dizzy,  and  incapable  of 
making  a  stand,  as  a  Swedenborgian  bad  spirit  that  has  wandered 
unawares  into  the  sphere  of  one  of  his  Good  Men,  or  Angels. 
But  in  its  own  world  do  we  feel  the  creature  is  so  very  bad  ? — 
The  Fainalls  and  the  .Mirables,  the  Dorimants  and  the  Lady 
Touchwoods,  in  their  own  sphere,  do  not  offend  my  moral  sense  ; 
in  fact  they  do  not  appeal  to  it  at  all.  They  seem  engaged  in 
their  proper  element.  They  break  through  no  laws,  or  conscien- 
tious restraints.  They  know  of  none.  They  have  got  out  of 
Christendom  into  the  land — what  shall  I  call  it?— of  cuckold  ry — 
the  Utopia  of  gallantry,  where  pleasure  is  duty,  and  the  manners 
perfect  freedom.  It  is  altogether  a  speculative  scene  of  things, 
which  has  no  reference  whatever  to  the  world  that  is.  No  good 
person  can  be  justly  offended  as  a  spectator,  because  no  good  person 
suffers  on  the  stage.  Judged  morally,  every  character  in  these 
plays — the  few  exceptions  only  are  mistakes — is  alike  essentially 
vain  and  worthless.  The  great  art  of  Congreve  is  especially 
shown  in  this,  that  he  has  entirely  excluded  from  his  scenes, — 
some  little  generosities  in  the  part  of  Angelica  perhaps  excepted, 
— not  only  anything  like  a  faultless  character,  but  any  pretensions 
to  goodness  or  good  feelings  whatsoever.  Whether  he  did  this 
designedly,  or  instinctively,  the  effect  is  as  happy,  as  the  design  (if 
design)  was  bold.  I  used  to  wonder  at  the  strange  power  which 
his  Way  of  the  World  in  particular  possesses  of  interesting  you 
all  along  in  the  pursuits  of  characters,  for  whom  you  absolutely 
care  nothing — for  you  neither  hate  nor  love  his  personages — ^and 
I  think  it  is  owing  to  this  very  indifference  for  any,  that  you  endure 
the  whole.  He  has  spread  a  privation  of  moral  light,  I  will  call 
it,  rather  than  by  the  ugly  name  of  palpable  darkness,  over  his 
creations  ;  and  his  shadows  flit  before  you  without  distinction  or 


186  ELI  A. 

. ^ Sl 

preference.  Had  he  introduced  a  good  character,  a  single  gush 
of  moral  feeling,  a  revulsion  of  the  judgment  to  actual  life  and 
actual  duties,  the  impertinent  Goshen  would  have  only  lighted  to 
the  discovery  of  deformities,  which  now  are  none,  because  we 
think  them  none. 

Translated  into  real  life,  the  characters  of  his,  and  his  friena 
Wycherley's  dramas,  are  profligates  and  strumpets, — the  business 
of  their  brief  existence,  the  undivided  pursuit  of  lawless  gallantry. 
No  other  spring  of  action,  or  possible  motive  of  conduct,  is  recog- 
nized ;  principles  which,  universally  acted  upon,  must  reduce  this 
frame  of  things  to  a  chaos.  But  we  do  them  wrong  in  so  translat- 
ing them.  No  such  effects  are  produced  in  their  world.  When 
we  are  among  them,  we  are  amongst  a  chaotic  people.  We  are  not 
to  judge  them  by  our  usages.  No  reverend  institutions  are 
insulted  by  their  proceedings — for  they  have  none  among  them. 
No  peace  of  families  is  violated — for  no  family  ties  exist  among 
them.  No  purity  of  the  marriage  bed  is  stained — for  none  is 
supposed  to  have  a  being.  No  deep  affections  are  disquieted,  no 
holy  wedlock  bands  are  snapped  asunder — for  affection's  depth 
and  wedded  faith  are  not  of  the  growth  of  that  soil.  There  is 
neither  right  nor  wrong, — gratitude  or  its  opposite, — claim  or  duty, 
— paternity  or  sonship.  Of  what  consequence  is  it  to  Virtue,  or 
how  is  she  at  all  concerned  about  it,  whether  Sir  Simon,  or  Dap- 
perwit,  steal  away  Miss  Martha ;  or  who  is  the  father  of  Lord 
Froth's  or  Sir  Paul  Pliant's  children  ? 

The  whole  is  a  passing  pageant,  where  we  should  sit  as  uncon- 
cerned at  the  issues,  for  life  or  death,-  as  at  a  battle  of  the  frogs 
and  mice.  But,  like  Don  Quixote,  we  take  part  against  the 
puppets,  and  quite  as  impertinently.  We  dare  not  contemplate 
an  Atlantis,  a  scheme,  out  of  which  our  coxcombical  moral  sense 
is  for  a  little  transitory  ease  excluded.  We  have  not  the  courage 
to  imagine  a  state  of  things  for  which  there  is  neither  reward  nor 
punishment.  We  cling  to  the  painful  necessities  of  shame  and 
blame.     We  would  indict  our  very  dreams. 

Amidst  the  mortifying  circumstances  attendant  upon  growing 
old,  it  is  something  to  have  seen  the  School  for  Scandal  in  its 
glory.  This  comedy  grew  out  of  Congreve  and  Wycherley,  but 
gathered  some  alloys  of  the  sentimental  comedy  which  followed 


THE  ARTIFICIAL  COMEDY  OF  THE  LAST  CENTURY.     1S7 

theirs.  It  is  impossible  that  it  should  be  now  acted,  though  it  con- 
tinues, at  long  intervals,  to  be  announced  in  the  bills.  Its  hero, 
when  Palmer  played  it  at  least,  was  Joseph  Surface.  When  I 
remember  the  gay  boldness,  the  graceful  solemn  plausibility,  the 
measured  step,  the  insinuating  voice — to  express  it  in  a  word — 
the  downright  acled  villainy  of  the  part,  so  different  from  the 
pressure  of  conscious  actual  wickedness, — the  hypocritical  assump- 
tion of  hypocrisy, — which  made  Jack  so  deservedly  a  favorite  in 
that  character,  1  must  needs  conclude  the  present  generation  of 
playgoers  more  virtuous  than  myself,  or  more  dense.  I  freely 
confess  that  he  divided  the  palm  with  me  with  his  Jjetter  brother; 
that,  in  fact,  I  liked  him  quite  as  well.  Not  but  there  are  passages, 
— like  that,  for  instance,  where  Joseph  is  made  to  refuse  a 
pittance  to  a  poor  relation, — incongruities  which  Sheridan  was 
fopced  upon  by  the  attempt  to  join  the  artificial  with  the  senti- 
mental comedy,  either  of  which  must  destroy  tlie  other — but  over 
these  obstructions  Jack's  manner  floated  him  so  lightly,  that  a 
refusal  from  liim  no  more  shocked  you,  tlian  the  easy  compliance 
of  Charles  gave  you  in  reality  any  pleasure ;  you  got  over  the 
paltry  question  as  quickly  as  you  could,  to  get  back  into  the 
regions  of  pure  comedy,  wliere  no  cold  moral  reigns.  The  highly 
artificial  manner  of  Palmer  in  this  character  counteracted  every 
disagreeable  impression  wiiich  you  miglit  have  received  from  the 
contrast,  supposing  them  real,  between  the  two  brothers.  You 
did  not  believe  in  Joseph  with  the  same  faith  with  which  you 
believed  in  Charles.  The  latter  was  a  pleasant  reality,  the  former 
a  no  less  pleasant  poetical  foil  to  it.  The  comedy,  I  have  said,  is 
incongruous  ;  a  mixture  of  Congreve  with  sentimental  incompati- 
bilities :  the  gaiety  upon  the  whole  is  buoyant ;  but  it  required 
the  consummate  art  of  Palmer  to  reconcile  the  discordant  elements. 
A  player  with  Jack's  talents,  if  we  had  one  now,  would  not 
dare  to  do  the  part  in  the  same  manner.  He  would  instinctively 
avoid  every  turn  which  might  tend  to  unrealize,  and  so  to  make 
the  character  fascinating.  He  must  take  tiis  cue  from  his  spec- 
tators, who  would  expect  a  bad  man  and  a  good  man  as  rigidly 
opposed  to  each  other  as  the  death-beds  of  those  geniuses  are  con- 
trasted in  the  prints,  which  I  am  sorry  to  say  have  disappeared 
from  the  windows  of  my  old   friend  Carrington  Bowles,  of  St. 


188  ^\  ELI  A. 

Paul's  Church-yard  memory — (an  exhibition  as  venerable  as  the 
adjacent  cathedral,  and  almost  coeval)  of  the  bad  and  good  man  at 
the  hour  of  death ;  where  the  ghastly  apprehensions  of  the  for- 
mer,— and  truly  the  grim  phantom  with  his  reality  of  a  toasting- 
fork  is  not  to  be  despised, — so  finely  contrast  with  the  meek  com- 
placent kissing  of  the  rod, — ^taking  it  in  like  honey  and  butter, — 
with  which  the  latter  submits  to  the  scythe  of  the  gentle  bleeder, 
Time,  who  wields  his  lancet  with  the  apprehensive  finger  of  a 
popular  young  ladies'  surgeon.  What  flesh,  like  loving  grass, 
would  not  covet  to  meet  half-way  the  stroke  of  such  a  delicate 
mower  ? — ^John  Palmer  was  twice  an  actor  in  this  exquisite  part. 
He  was  playing  to  you  all  the  while  that  he  was  playing  upon  Sir 
Peter  and  his  lady.  You  had  the  first  intimation  of  a  sentiment 
before  it  was  on  his  lips.  His  altered  voice  was  meant  to  you,  and 
you  were  to  suppose  that  his  fictitious  co-fiutterers  on  the  stage 
perceived  nothing  at  all  of  it.  What  was  it  to  you  if  that  half 
reality,  the  husband,  was  overreached  by  the  puppetry — or  the 
thin  thing  (Lady  Teazle's  reputation)  was  persuaded  it  was  dying 
of  a  plethory  ?  The  fortunes  of  Othello  and  Desdemona  were  not 
concerned  in  it.  Poor  Jack  has  passed  from  the  stage  in  good 
time,  that  he  did  not  live  to  this  our  age  of  seriousness.  The  plea- 
sant old  Teazle  King,  too,  is  gone  in  good  time.  His  manner 
would  scarce  have  passed  current  in  our  day.  We  must  love  or 
hate — acquit  or  condemn — censure  or  pity — exert  our  detestable 
coxcombry  of  moral  judgment  upon  everything.  Joseph  Surface, 
to  go  down  now,  must  be  a  downright  revolting  villain — no  compro*- 
mise — his  first  appearance  must  shock  and  give  horror — his  specious 
plausil.ilities,  which  the  pleasurable  faculties  of  our  fathers  wel- 
comed with  such  hearty  greetings,  knowing  that  no  harm  (dra- 
matic harm  even)  could  come,  or  was  meant  to  come,  of  them, 
must  inspire  a  cold  and  killing  aversion.  Charles  (the  real  cant- 
ing person  of  the  scene — for  the  hypocrisy  of  Joseph  has  its  ulte- 
rior legitimate  ends,  but  his  brother's  professions  of  a  good  heart 
centre  in  downright  self-satisfaction)  must  be  loved  and  Joseph 
hated.  To  balance  one  disagreeable  reality  with  another.  Sir 
Peter  Teazle  must  be  no  longer  the  comic  idea  of  a  fretful  old 
bachelor  bridegroom,  whose  teasings  (while  King  acted  it)  were 
evidently  as  much  played  off  at  you,  as  they  were  meant  to  con- 


THE  ARTIFICIAL  COMEDY  OF  THE  LAST  CENTURY.    189 

eern  anybody  on  the  stage — he  must  be  a  real  person,  capable  in 
law  of  sustaining  an  injury — a  person  -towards  whom  duties  are 
to  be  acknowledged — the  genuine  crim.  con.  antagonist  of  the  vil- 
lainous seducer  Joseph.  To  realize  him  more,  his  sufferings  under 
his  unfortunate  match  must  have  the  downright  pungency  of  life 
— must  (or  should)  make  you  not  mirthful  but  uncomfortable,  just 
as  the  same  predicament  would  move  you  in  a  neighbor  or  old 
friend.  The  delicious  scenes  which  give  the  play  its  name  and 
zest,  must  affect  you  in  the  same  serious  manner  as  if  you  heard 
the  reputation  of  a  dear  female  friend  attacked  in  your  real  pre- 
sence. Crabtree  and  Sir  Benjamin — those  poor  snakes  that  live 
but  in  the  sunshine  of  your  mirth — must  be  ripened  by  this  hot- 
bed process  of  realization  into  asps  or  amphisbaenas ;  and  Mrs. 
Candor — O !  frightful ! — become  a  hooded  serpent.  Oh  !  who 
that  remembers  Parsons  and  Dodd — the  wasp  and  butterfly  of  the 
School  for  Scandal — in  those  two  characters  ;  and  charming  natu- 
ral Miss  Pope,  the  perfect  gentlewoman  as  distinguished  from  the 
fine  lady  of  comedy,  in  this  latter  part — would  forego  the  true 
scenic  delight — the  escape  from  life — the  oblivion  of  consequences 
— ^the  holiday  barring  out  of  the  pedant  Reflection — those  Satur- 
nalia of  two  or  three  brief  hours,  well  woa  from  the  world — ^to  sit 
instead  at  one  of  our  modern  plays — to  have  his  coward  conscience 
(that  forsooth  must  not  be  lefl;  for  a  moment )F*stimulated  with  per- 
petual appeals — dulled  rather,  and  blunted,  as  a  faculty  without 
repose  must  be — and  his  moral  vanity  pampered  with  images  of 
notional  justice,  notional  beneficence,  lives  saved  without  the 
spectators'  risk,  and  fortunes  given  away  that  cost  the  author 
nothing  ? 

No  piece  was,  perhaps,  ever  so  completely  cast  in  all  its  parts 
as  this  manager^s  comedy.  Miss  Farren  had  succeeded  to  Mrs. 
Abington  in  Lady  Teazle  ;  and  Smith,  the  original  Charles,  had 
retired  when  I  first  saw  it.  The  rest  of  the  characters,  with  very 
slight  exceptions,  remained.  I  remember  it  was  then  the  fashion 
to  cry  down  John  Kemble,  who  took  the  part  of  Charles  after 
Smith  ;  but,  I  thought,  very  unjustly.  Smith,  I  fancy,  was  more 
airy,  and  took  the  eye  with  a  certain  gaiety  of  person.  He 
brought  with  him  no  sombre  recollections  of  tragedy.  He  had 
not  to  expiate  the  fault  of  having  pleased  beforehand  in  lofty  de- 


190  ELIA. 

claraation.  He  had  no  sins  of  Hamlet  or  of  Richard  to  atone  for." 
His  failure  in  these  parts  was  a  passport  to  success  in  one  of  so 
opposite  a  tendency.  But  as„far  as  I  could  judge,  the  weighty- 
sense  of  Kemble  made  up  for  mor^  personal  incapacity  than  he 
had  to  answer  for.  His  harshest  tones  in  this  part  came  steeped, 
and  dulcified  in  good-humor.  He  made  his  defects  a  grace.  His 
exact  declamatory  manner,  as  he  managed  it,  only  served  to 
convey  the  points  of  his  dialogue  with  more  precision.  It  seemed 
to  head  the  shafts  to  carry  them  deeper.  Not  one  of  his  sparkling 
sentences  was  lost.  I  remember  minutely  how  he  delivered  each 
in  succession,  and  cannot  by  any  effort  imagine  how  any  of  them 
could  be  altered  for  the  better.  No  man  could  deliver  brilliant 
dialogue — the  dialogue  of  Congreve  or  of  Wycherley — because 
none  understood  it — half  so  well  as  John  Kemble.  His  Valentine, 
in  Love  for  Love,  was,  to  my  recollection,  faultless.  He  flagged 
sometimes  in  the  intervals  of  tragic  passion.  He  would  slumber 
over  the  level  parts  of  an  heroic  character.  His  Macbeth  has 
been  known  to  nod.  But  he  always  seemed  to  me  to  be  particu- 
larly alive  to  pointed  and  witty  dialogue.  The  relaxing  levities 
of  tragedy  have  not  been  touched  by  any  since  him — the  playful 
court-bred  spirit  in  which  he  condescended  to  the  players  in 
Hamlet — the  sportive  relief  which  he  threw  into  the  darker  shades 
of  Richard — disappeared  with  him.  He  had  his  sluggish  moods, 
his  torpors — but  they  were  the  halting-stones  and  resting-place 
of  his  tragedy — politic  savings,  and  fetches  of  the  breath — hus- 
bandry of  the  lungs,  where  nature  pointed  him  to  be  an  economist 
— rather,  I  think,  than  errors  of  the  judgment.  They  were,  at 
worst,  less  painful  than  the  eternal  tormenting  unappeasable  vigi- 
lance,— the  "  lidless  dragon  eyes,"  of  present  fashionable  tragedy. 


'-^'^ 


ON  THE  ACTING  OF  MUNDKN.  191 


•^.^ 


ON  THE  ACTING  OF  MUNDEN 


Not  many  nights  ago,  I  had  come  home  from  seeing  this  extra- 
ordinary performer  in  Cockletop ;  and  when  I  retired  to  my  pil- 
low, his  whimsical  image  still  stuck  by  me,  in  a  manner  as  to 
threaten  sleep.  In  vain  I  tried  to  divest  myself  of  it,  by  conjur- 
ing up  the  most  opposite  associations.  I  resolved  to  be  serious. 
I  raised  up  the  gravest  topics  of  life  ;  private  misery,  public  ca- 
lamity.    All  would  not  do  : 

There  the  antic  sate 

Mocking  our  state 

his  queer  visnoray — his  bewildering  costume — all  the  strange 
things  which  he  had  raked  together — his  serpentine  rod,  swagging 
about  in  his  pocket — Cleopatra's  tear,  and  the  rest  of  his  relics — 
O'Keefe's  wild  farce,  and  his  wilder  commentary — till  the  pas- 
sion of  laughter,  like  grief  in  excess,  relieved  itself  by  its  own 
weight,  inviting  the  sleep  which  in  the  first  instance  it  had  driven 
away. 

But  I  was  not  to  escape  so  easily.  No  sooner  did  I  fall  into 
slumbers,  than  the  same  image,  only  more  perplexing,  assailed 
me  in  the  shape  of  dreams.  Not  one  Munden,  but  five  hundred, 
were  dancing  before  me,  like  the  faces  which,  whether  you  will 
or  no,  come  when  you  have  been  taking  opium — all  the  strange 
combinations,  which  this  strangest  of  all  strange  mortals  ever  shot 
his  proper  countenance  into,  from  the  day  he  came  commissioned 
to  dry  up  the  tears  of  the  town  for  the  loss  of  the  now  almost  for- 
gotten Edwin.  O  for  the  power  of  the  pencil  to  have  fixed  them 
when   I  awoke !     A  season  or  two  since,  there  was  exhibited  a 


192  ELIA. 

Hogarth  gallery.  I  do  not  see  why  there  should  not  be  a  Mun- 
den  gallery.  In  richness  and  variety,  the  latter  would  not  fall 
far  short  of  the  former. 

There  is  one  face  of  Farley,  one  face  of  Knight,  one  (but 
what  a  one  it  is !)  of  Listen  ;  but  Munden  has  none  that  you  can 
properly  pin  down,  and  call  his.  When  you  think  he  has  ex- 
hausted his  battery  of  looks,  in  unaccountable  warfare  with  your 
gravity,  suddenly  he  sprouts  out  an  entirely  new  set  of  features, 
like  Hydra.  He  is  not  one,  but  legion  ;  not  so  much  a  comedian, 
as  a  company.  If  his  name  could  be  multiplied  like  his  coun- 
tenance, it  might  fill  a  play-bill.  He,  and  he  alone,  literally 
makes  faces  :  applied  to  any  other  person,  the  phrase  is  a  mere 
figure,  denoting  certain  modifications  of  the  human  countenance. 
Out  of  some  invisible  wardrobe  he  dips  for  faces,  as  his  friend 
Suett  used  for  wigs,  and  fetches  them  out  as  easily.  I  should 
not  be  surprised  to  see  him  some  day  put  out  the  head  of  a 
river-horse ;  or  come  forth  a  pewitt,  or  lapwing,  some  feathered 
metamorphosis. 

I  have  seen  this  gifted  actor  in  Sir  Christopher  Curry — in  Old 
Dornton — diffuse  a  glow  of  sentiment  which  has  made  the  pulse 
of  a  crowded  theatre  beat  like  that  of  one  man  ;  when  he  has 
come  in  aid  of  the  pulpit,  doing  good  to  the  moral  heart  of  a 
people.  I  have  seen  some  faint  approaches  to  this  sort  of  ex- 
cellence in  other  players.  But  in  the  grand  grotesque  of  farce, 
Munden  stands  out  as  single  and  unaccompanied  as  Hogarth. 
Hogarth,  strange  to  tell,  had  no  followers.  The  school  of  Mun- 
den began,  and  must  end,  with  himself. 

Can  any  man  wonder,  like  him  ?  can  any  man  see  ghosts,  like 
him  ?  or  fght  with  his  own  shadow — "  sessa" — as  he  does  in  that 
strangely-neglected  thing,  the  Cobbler  of  Preston — where  his 
alternations  from  the  Cobbler  to  the  Magnifico,  and  from  the 
Magnifico  to  the  Cobbler,  keep  the  brain  of  the  spectator  in  as\ 
wild  a  ferment,  as  if  some  Arabian  Night  were  being  acted  be- 
fore him.  Who  like  him  can  throw,  or  ever  attempted  to  throw, 
a  preternatural  interest  over  the  commonest  daily-life  objects  ? 
A  table  or  a  joint-stool,  in  his  conception,  rises  into  a  dignity 
equivalent  to  Cassiopeia's  chair.  It  is  invested  with  constellatory 
importance.     You  could  not  speak  of  it  with  more  deference,  if 


ON  THE  ACTING  OF  MUNDEN.  193 

it  were  mounted  into  the  fimnament.  A  beggar  in  the  hands  of 
Michael  Angelo,  says  Fuseli,  rose  the  Patriarch  of  Poverty.  So 
the  gusto  of  Munden  antiquates  and  ennobles  what  it  touches, 
His  pots  and  his  ladles  are  as  grand  and  primal  as  the  seething* 
pots  and  hooks  seen  in  old  prophetic  vision.  A  tub  of  butter, 
contemplated  by  him,  amounts  to  a  Platonic  idea.  He  under, 
stands  a  leg  of  mutton  in  its  quiddity.  He  stands  wondering, 
amid  the  common-place  materials  of  life,  like  primeval  man  with 
the  sun  and  stars  about  him. 


^ 


1 


THE 


ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A. 


BY    CHARLES    LAMB 


SECOND    SERIES. 


NEW. YORK: 
WILEY   &   PUTNAM,    161    BROADWAY. 


1845. 


PREFACE. 

BY  A  FRIEND  OF  THE  LATE  KLIA. 


This  poor  gentleman,  who  for  some  months  past  h:id  been 
in  a  declining  way,  hath  at  length  paid  his  final  tribute  to 
nature. 

To  say  truth,  it  is  time  he  were  gone.  The  humor  of 
the  thing,  if  there  ever  was  much  in  it,  was  pretty  well 
exhausted  ;  and  a  two  years'  and  a  half  existence  has  been 
a  tolerable  duration  for  a  phantom. 

I  am  now  at  liberty  to  confess,  that  much  which  I  have 
heard  objected  to  my  late  friend's  writings  was  well-found- 
ed. Crude  they  are,  I  grant  you — a  sort  of  unlicked,  incon- 
dite things — villainously  pranked  in  an  aifected  array  of 
antique  modes  and  phrases.  They  had  not  been  his,  if  they 
had  been  other  than  such  ;  and  better  it  is,  that  a  writer 
should  be  natural  in  a  self-pleasing  quaintness,  than  to  affect 
a  naturalness  (so  called)  that  should  be  strange  to  him. 
Egotistical  they  have  been  pronounced  by  some  who  did 
not  know,  that  what  he  tells  us,  as  of  himself,  was  often 
true  only  (historically)  of  another ;  as  in  a  former  Essay 
(to  save  many  instances) — where  under  the  first  person  (his 
favorite  figure)  he  shadows  forth  the  forlorn  estate  of  a 
country-boy  placed  at  a  London  school,  far  from  his  friends 
and  connexions — in  direct  opposition  to  his  own  early  his- 
tory. If  it  be  egotism  to  imply  and  twine  with  his  own 
identity  the  griefs  and  affections  of  another — making  him- 
self many,  or  reducing  many  unto  himself — then  is  the  skil- 
ful novelist,  who  all  along  brings  in  his  hero  or  heroine, 
speaking  of  themselves,  the  greatest  egotist  of  all ;  who 


PREFACE. 


yet  has  never,  therefore,  been  accused  of  that  narrowness. 
And  how  shall  the  intenser  dramatist  escape  being  faulty, 
who  doubtless,  under  cover  of  passion  uttered  by  another, 
oftentimes  gives  blameless  vent  to  his  most  inward  feelings, 
and  expresses  his  own  story  modestly  ? 

My  late  friend  was  in  many  respects  a  singular  charac- 
ter. Those  who  did  not  like  him,  hated  him  ;  and  some, 
who  once  liked  him,  afterwards  became  his  bitterest  haters. 
The  truth  is,  he  gave  himself  too  little  concern  what  he 
uttered,  and  in  whose  presence.  He  observed  neither  time 
nor  place,  and  would  e'en  out  with  what  came  uppermost. 
With  the  severe  religionist  he  would  pass  for  a  free-thinker  ; 
while  the  other  faction  set  him  down  for  a  bigot,  or  per- 
suaded themselves  that  he  belied  his  sentiments.  Few  un- 
derstood him  ;  and  I  am  not  certain  that  at  all  times  he 
quite  understood  himself.  He  too  much  affected  that  dan- 
gerous figure — irony.  He  sowed  doubtful  speeches,  and 
reaped  plain,  unequivocal  hatred.  He  would  interrupt  the 
gravest  discussion  with  some  light  jest ;  and  yet,  perhaps, 
not  quite  irrelevant  in  ears  that  could  understand  it.  Your 
long  and  much  talkers  hated  him.  The  informal  habits  of 
his  mind,  joined  to  an  inveterate  impediment  of  speech, 
forbade  him  to  be  an  orator ;  and  he  seemed  determined 
that  no  one  else  should  play  that  part  when  he  was  present. 
He  was  petit  and  ordinary  in  his  person  and  appearance. 
I  have  seen  him  sometimes  in  what  is  called  good  company, 
but  where  he  has  been  a  stranger,  sit  silent,  and  be  sus- 
pected for  an  odd  fellow  ;  till  some  unlucky  occasion  pro- 
voking it,  he  would  stutter  out  some  senseless  pun  (not 
altogether  senseless,  perhaps,  if  rightly  taken),  w^hich  has 
stamped  his  character  for  the  evening.  It  was  hit  or  miss 
with  him  ;  but  nine  times  out  of  ten,  he  contrived  by  this 
device  to  send  away  a  whole  company  his  enemies. 
His  conceptions  rose  kindlier  than  his  utterance,  and  his 
happiest  impromptus  had  the  appearance  of  effort.  He  has 
been  accused  of  trying  to  be  witty,  when  in  truth  he  was 


PREFACE. 


out  struggling  to  give  his  poor  thoughts  articulation.  He 
chose  his  companions  for  some  individuality  of  character 
which  they  manifested.  Hence,  not  many  persons  of  science, 
and  few  professed  literati,  were  of  his  councils.  They  were, 
for  the  most  part,  persons  of  an  uncertain  fortune  ;  and,  as 
to  such  people  commonly  nothing  is  more  obnoxious  than  a 
gentleman  of  settled  (though  moderate)  income,  he  passed 
with  most  of  them  for  a  great  miser.  To  my  knowledge  this 
was  a  mistake.  His  intimados,  to  confess  a  truth,  were  in  the 
world's  eye  a  ragged  regiment.  He  found  them  floating  on 
the  surface  of  society  ;  and  the  color,  or  something  else,  in 
the  weed  pleased  him.  The  burrs  stuck  to  him — but  they 
were  good  and  loving  burrs  for  all  that.  He  never  greatly 
cared  for  the  society  of  what  are  called  good  people.  If 
any  of  these  were  scandalized  (and  offences  were  sure  to 
arise),  he  could  not  help  it.  When  he  has  been  remon- 
strated with  for  not  making  more  concessions  to  the  feelings 
of  good  people,  he  would  retort  by  asking,  what  one  point 
did  these  good  people  ever  concede  to  him  ?  He  was  tem- 
perate in  his  meals  and  diversions,  but  always  kept  a  little 
on  this  side  of  abstemiousness.  Only  in  the  use  of  the  In- 
dian weed  he  might  be  thought  a  little  excessive.  He  took 
it,  he  would  say,  as  a  solvent  of  speech.  Marry — as  the 
friendly  vapor  ascended,  how  his  prattle  would  curl  up 
sometimes  with  it !  the  ligaments  which  tongue-tied  him, 
were  loosened,  and  the  stammerer  proceeded  a  statist ! 

I  do  not  know  whether  I  ought  to  bemoan  or  rejoice  that 
my  old  friend  is  departed.  His  jests  were  beginning  to 
grow  obsolete,  and  his  stories  to  be  found  out.  He  felt  the 
approaches  of  age  ;  and  while  he  pretended  to  cHng  to  life, 
you  saw  how  slender  were  the  ties  left  to  bind  him.  Dis- 
coursing with  him  latterly  on  this  subject,  he  expressed 
himself  with  a  pettishness,  which  I  thought  unworthy  of 
him.  In  our  walks  about  his  suburban  retreat  (as  he  called 
it)  at  Shacklewell,  some  children  belonging  to  a  school  of 
industry  had  met  us,  and  bowed   and   curtseyed,  as  he 


PREFACE. 


thought,  in  an  especial  manner  to  him,  "  They  take  me 
for  a  visiting  governor,"  he  muttered  earnestly.  He  had  a 
horror,  which  he  carried  to  a  foible,  of  looking  like  any- 
thing important  and  pai'ochial.  He  thought  that  he  ap- 
proached nearer  to  that  stamp  daily.  He  had  a  general 
aversion  from  being  treated  like  a  grave  or  respectable 
character,  and  kept  a  wary  eye  upon  the  advances  of  age 
that  should  so  entitle  him.  He  herded  always,  while  it  was 
possible,  with  people  younger  than  himself  He  did  not 
conform  to  the  march  of  time,  but  was  dragged  along  in 
the  procession.  His  manners  lagged  behind  his  years.  He 
was  too  much  of  the  boy-man.  The  toga  virilis  never  sate 
gracefully  on  his  shoulders.  The  impressions  of  infancy 
had  burnt  into  him,  and  he  resented  the  impertinence  of 
manhood.  These  were  weaknesses ;  but  such  as  they 
were,  they  are  a  key  to  explicate  some  of  his  writings. 


CONTENTS. 


PASS 
BliAKESMOOR    IN   H SHIRE • •  •         1 

Poor  Relations 7 

Detached  Thoughts  on  Books  and  Reading 14 

Stage  Illusion 21 

To  the  Shade  of  Elliston 25 

Ellistoniana 28 

The  Old  Margate  Hot 34 

The  Convalescent 42 

Sanity  of  True  Genius. 47 

Captain  Jackson 51 

The  Superannuated  Man 56 

The  Genteel  Style  in  Writing 64 

Barbara  S 67 

The  Tombs  in  the  Abbey 75 

Amicus  Redivivus 78 

Some  Sonnets  of  Sir  Philip  Sydney 83 

Newspapers  Thirty-five  Years  Ago , 92 

Barrenness  of  the  Imaginative  Faculty  in  the  Productions 

of  Modern  Art 100 

The  Wedding Ill 

Rejoicings  upon  the  New  Year's  Coming  of  Age 117 

Confessions  of  a  Drunkard 123 

Old  China 132 

The  Child  Angel  ;  a  Dream 138 

Popular  Fallacies 

I.  That  a  Bully  is  always  a  Coward 141 

II.  That  ill-gotten  gain  never  prospers.  ,^ 142 

III.  That  a  man  must  not  laugh  at  his  own  jest ib. 

IV.  That  such  a  One  shows  his  Breeding. — ^That  it  is  easy 

TO  PERCEIVE  HE  IS  NO  GENTLEMAN 143 

V.  That  the  Poor  copy  the  Vices  of  the  Rich. 144 

VI.  That  Enough  is  as  good  as  a  Feast ,....,,.  145 


X  CONTENTS 

VII.  Of  two  Disputants  the  warmest  is  generally  in  the 

WRONG 146 

VIII.  That  Verbal  Allusions   are    not  Wit,  because   they 

WILL  NOT   BEAR  TRANSLATION 147 

IX.  That  the  Worst  Puns  are  the  Best 148 

X.  That  Handsome  is  that  Handsome  does 150 

XL  That  we  must  not  look  a  Giet-Horse  in  the  Mouth...  .  153 

XII.  That  H<wm[e  is  Home  though  it  is  never  so  Homely 155 

XIII.  That  you  must  love  me,  and  love  my  Dog 159 

XIV.  That  we  should  rise  with  the  Lark 162 

XV.  That  we  should  lie  down  with  the  Lamb 164 

XVI.  That  a  sulky  temper  is  a  misfortune 166 


I 


ELI  A. 


BLAKESMOOR  IN  H SHIRE 


!« 


I  DO  not  know  a  pleasure  more  affecting  than  to  range  at  will 
over  the  deserted  apartments  of  some  fine  old  family  mansion. 
The  traces  of  extinct  grandeur  admit  of  a  better  passion  than 
envy  :  and  contemplations  on  the  great  and  good,  whom  we  fancy 
in  succession  to  have  been  its  inhabitants,  weave  for  us  illusions, 
incompatible  with  the  bustle  of  modern  occupancy,  and  vanities 
of  foolish  present  aristocracy.  The  same  difference  of  ieeling,  I 
think,  attends  us  between  entering  an  empty  and  a  crowded 
church..  In  the  latter  it  is  chance  but  some  present  human  frailty 
— an  act  of  inattention  on  the  part  of  some  of  the  auditoiy — or 
a  trait  of  affectation,  or  worse,  vain-glory  on  that  of  the  preacher 
•—puts  us  by  our  best  thoughts,  disharmonizing  the  place  and  the 
occasion.  But  wouldst  thou  know  the  beauty  of  holiness  ? — go 
alone  on  some  week-day,  borrowing  the  keys  of  good  Master 
Sexton,  traverse  the  cool  aisles  of  some  country  church  :  think  of 
the  piety  that  has  kneeled  there — the  congregations,  old  and 
young,  that  have  found  consolation  there — the  meejc  pastor — the 
docile  parishioner.  With  no  disturbing  emotions,  no  cross  con- 
flicting comparisons,  dn^k  in  the  tranquillity  of  the  place,  till 
thou  thyself  become  as  fixed  and  motionless  as  the  marble  effigies 
that  kneel  and  weep  around  thee. 

Journeying  northward  lately,  I  could  not  resist  going  some  few 
?niles  out  of  my  road  to  look  upon  the  remains  of  an  o}d  great 

PART  II.  2 


3  ELIA. 

house  with  which  I  had  been  impressed  in  this  way  in  infancy. 
I  was  apprised  that  the  owner  of  it  had  lately  pulled  it  down ; 
still  I  had  a  vague  notion  that  it  could  not  all  have  perished,  that 
so  much  solidity  with  magnificence  could  not  have  been  crushed 
all  at  once  into  the  mere  dust  and  rubbish  which  I  found  it. 

The  work  of  ruin  had  proceeded  with  a  swift  hand  indeed, 
and  the  demolition  of  a  few  weeks  had  reduced  it  to — an  anti- 
quity. ^ 

I  was  astonished  at  the  indistinction  of  everything.  Where 
had  stood  the  great  gates  ?  What  bounded  the  court-yard  ? 
Whereabout  did  the  out-houses  commence  ?  A  few  bricks  only 
lay  as  representatives  of  that  which  was  so  stately  and  so  spa- 
cious. 

Death  does  not  shrink  up  his  human  victim  at  this  rate.  The 
burnt  ashes  of  a  man  weigh  more  in  their  proportion. 

Had  I  seen  these  brick-and-mortar  knaves  at  their  process  of 
destruction,  at  the  plucking  of  every  panel  I  should  have  felt  the 
varlets  at  my  heart.  I  should  have  cried  out  to  them  to  spare  a 
plank  at  least  out  of  the  cheerful  store-room,  in  whose  hot  window- 
seat  I  used  to  sit  and  read  Cowley,  with  the  grass-plot  before,  and 
the  hum  and  flappings  of  that  one  solitary  wasp  that  ever  haunted 
it  about  me — it  is  in  mine  ears  now,  ps  oft  as  summer  returns ; 
or  a  panel  of  the  yellow  room. 

Why,  every  plank  and  panel  in  that  house  for  me  had  magic 
in  it.  The  tapestried  bed-rooms — tapestry  so  much  better  than 
painting — not  adorning  merely,  but  peopling  the  wainscots — at 
which  childhood  ever  and  anon  would  steal  a  look,  shifting  its 
coverlid  (replaced  as  quickly)  to  exercise  its  tender  courage  in  a 
momentary  eye-encounter  with  those  stern  bright  visages,  staring 
reciprocally — all  Ovid  on  the  walls,  in  colors  vivider  than  his 
descriptions.  Actseon  in  mid  sprout,  with  the  unappeasable  pru- 
dery of  Diana  ;  and  the  still  more  provoking,  and  almost  culinary 
coolness  of  Dan  Phoebus,  eel-fashion,  deliberately  divesting  of 
Marsyas. 

Then,  that  haunted  room — in  which  old  Mrs.  Battle  died — 
whereinto  I  have  crept,  but  always  in  the  day  time,  with  a  pas- 
sion of  fear ;  and  a  sneaking  curiosity,  terror-tainted,  to  hold 
communication  with  the  past.     How  shall  they  build  it  up  again  ? 


BLAKESMOOR  IN  H SHIRE. 


It  was  an  old  deserted  place,  yet  not  so  long  deserted  but  that 
traces  of  the  splendor  of  past  inmates  were  everywhere  apparent. 
Its  furniture  was  still  standing — even  to  the  tarnished  gilt  leather 
battledoors,  and  crumbling  feathers  of  shuttlecocks  in  the  nursery, 
which  told  that  children  had  once  played  there.  But  I  was  a 
lonely  child,  and  had  the  range  at  will  of  every  apartment, 
knew  every  nook  and  corner,  wondered  and  worshipped  every- 
where. 

The  solitude  of  childhood  is  not  so  much  the  mother  of  thought, 
as  it  is  the  feeder  of  love,  and  silence,  and  admiration.  So  strange 
a  passion  for  the  place  possessed  me  in  those  years,  that,  though 
there  lay — I  shame  to  say  how  few  roods  distant  from  the  man- 
sion— half  hid  by  trees,  what  I  judged  some  romantic  lake,  such 
was  the  spell  which  bound  me  to  the  house,  and  such  my  careful- 
ness not  to  pass  its  strict  and  proper  precincts,  that  the  idle  waters 
lay  unexplored  for  me ;  and  not  till  late  in  life,  curiosity  prevail- 
ing over  elder  devotion,  I  found,  to  my  astonishment,  a  pretty 
brawling  brook  had  been  the  Lacus  Incognitus  of  my  infancy. 
Variegated  views,  extensive  prospects — and  those  at  no  great 
distance  from  the  house — I  was  told  of  such — what  were  they  to 
me,  being  out  of  the  boundaries  of  my  Eden  ?  So  far  from  a 
wish  to  roam,  I  would  have  drawn,  methought,  still  closer  the 
fences  of  my  chosen  prison  ;  and  have  been  hemmed  in  by  a  yet 
securer  cincture  of  those  excluding  garden  walls.  I  could  have 
exclaimed  with  that  garden-loving  poet — 

Bind  me,  ye  woodbines,  in  your  twines ; 
Curl  me  about,  ye  gadding  vines  ; 
And  oh  so  close  your  circles  lace. 
That  I  may  never  leave  this  place  ; 
But,  lest  your  fetters  prove  too  weak. 
Ere  I  your  silken  bondage  break. 
Do  you,  0  brambles,  chain  me  too. 
And  courteous  briars,  nail  me  through. 

I  was  here  as  in  a  lonely  temple.  Snug  fire-sides — the  low- 
built  roof— parlors  ten  feet  by  ten — frugal  boards,  and  all  the  home- 
liness of  home — these  were  the  condition  of  my  birth — the  whole- 
some soil  which  I  was  planted  in.  Yet,  without  impeachment  to 
tlieir  tenderest  lessons,  I  am  not  sorry  to  have  had  glances  of 


4  ELIA. 

something  beyond ;  and  to  have  taken,  if  but  a  peep,  in  child- 
hood, at  the  contrasting  accidents  of  a  great  fortune. 

To  have  the  feeling  of  gentility,  it  is  not  necessary  to  have 
been  born  gentle.  The  pride  of  ancestry  may  be  had  on  cheaper 
terms  than  to  be  obliged  to  an  importunate  race  of  ancestors ; 
and  the  coatless  antiquary  in  his  unemblazoned  cell,  revolving 
the  long  line  of  a  Mowbray's  or  De  Clifford's  pedigree,  at  those 
sounding  names  may  warm  himself  into  as  gay  a  vanity  as  these 
who  do  inherit  them.  The  claims  of  birth  are  ideal  m'erely,  and 
what  herald  shall  go  about  to  strip  me  of  an  idea  ?  Is  it  trenchant 
to  their  swords  ?  can  it  be  hacked  off  as  a  spur  can  ?  or  torn 
away  like  a  tarnished  garter  ? 

What  else  were  the  families  of  the  great  to  us?  what  pleasure 
should  we  take  in  their  tedious  genealogies,  or  their  capitulatory 
brass  monuments  ?  What  to  us  the  uninterrupted  current  of 
their  bloods,  if  our  own  did  not  answer  within  us  to  a  cognate 
and  correspondent  elevation  ? 

Or  wherefore  else,  O  tattered  and  diminished  'Scutcheon  that 
hung  upon  the  time-worn  walls  of  thy  princely  stairs,  Blakes- 
MOOR  !  have  I  in  childhood  so  ofl  stood  poring  upon  the  mystic 
characters — thy  emblematic  supporters,  with  their  prophetic 
"  Resurgam  " — till,  every  dreg  of  peasantry  purging  off,  I  re- 
ceived into  myself  Very  Gentility  ?  Thou  wert  first  in  my 
morning  eyes ;  and  of  nights  hast  detained  my  steps  from  bed- 
ward,  till  it  was  but  a  step  from  gazing  at  thee  to  dreaming  on 
thee. 

This  is  the  only  true  gentry  by  adoption ;  the  veritable  change 
of  blood,  and  not,  as  empirics  have  fabled,  by  transfusion. 

Who  it  was  by  dying  that  had  earned  the  splendid  trophy,  I 
know  not,  I  inquired  not ;  but  its  fading  rags,  and  colors  cobweb- 
stained,  told  that  its  subject  was  of  two  centuries  back. 

And  what  if  my  ancestor  at  that  date  was  some  Damoetas — 
feeding  flocks — not  his  own,  upon  the  hills  of  Lincoln — did  I  in 
less  earnest  vindicate  to  myself  the  family  trappings  of  this  once 
proud  JEgon  ?  repaying  by  a  backward  triumph  the  insults  he 
might  possibly  have  heaped  in  his  life-time  upon  my  poor  pastoral 
progenitor. 

If  it  were  presumption  so  to  speculate,  the  present  owners  of 


BLAKESMOOR  IN  H SHIRE. 


the  mansion  had  least  reason  to  complain.  They  had  long  for- 
saken the  old  house  of  their  fathers  for  a  newer  trifle ;  and  I  was 
left  to  appropriate  to  myself  what  images  I  could  pick  up,  to  raise 
my  fancy,  or  soothe  my  vanity. 

I  was  the  true  descendant  of  those  old  W s ;  and  not  the 

present  family  of  that  name,  who  had  fled  the  old  waste  places. 

Mine  was  that  gallery  of  good  old  family  portraits,  which  as  I 
have  gone  over,  giving  them  in  fancy  my  own  family  name,  one 
and  then  another — would  seem  to  smile,  reaching  forward  from 
the  canvas,  to  recognize  the  new  relationship ;  while  the  rest 
looked  grave,  as  it  seemed,  at  the  vacancy  in  their  dwelling,  and 
thoughts  of  fled  posterity. 

That  Beauty  with  the  cool  blue  pastoral  drapery,  and  a  lamb 
— that  hung  next  the  great  bay  window — with  the  bright  yel- 
low H shire  hair,   and   eye  of  watchet    hue — so   like    my 

Alice ! — I  am  persuaded  she  was  a  true  Elia — Mildred  Elia,  I 
take  it. 

Mine  too,  Blakesmoor,  was  thy  noble  Marble  Hall  with  its 
mosaic  pavements,  and  its  Twelve  Caesars — stately  busts  in 
marble — ranged  round  ;  of  whose  countenances,  young  reader 
of  faces  as  I  was,  the  frowning  beauty  of  Nero,  I  remember, 
had  most  of  my  wonder ;  but  the  mild  Galba  had  my  love. 
There  they  stood  in  the  coldness  of  death,  yet  freshness  of  immor- 
tality. 

Mine  too  thy  lofty  Justice  Hall,  with  its  one  chair  of  authority, 
high-backed  and  wickered,  once  the  terror  of  luckless  poacher, 
or  self-forgetful  maiden — so  common  since,  that  bats  have  roosted 
in  it. 

Mine  too — whose  else  ? — thy  costly  fruit-garden,  with  its  sun- 
baked southern  wall ;  the  ampler  pleasure-garden,  rising  back- 
wards from  the  house  in  triple  terraces,  with  flower-pots  now  of 
palest  lead,  save  that  a  speck  here  and  there,  saved  from  the  ele- 
ments, bespake  their  pristine  state  to  have  been  gilt  and  glit- 
tering ;  the  verdant  quarters  backwarder  still ;  and  stretching 
still  beyond,  in  old  formality,  thy  firry  wilderness,  the  haunt  of 
the  squirrel,  and  the  day- long  murmuring  wood-pigeon,  with 
that  antique  image  in  the  centre,  God  or  Goddess  I  wist  not; 
but  child  of  Athens  or  old  Rome  paid  never  a  sincerer  worship 


6  ELIA. 

to  Pan  or  to  Sylvanus  in  their  native  groves,  than  I  to  that  frag- 
mental  mystery. 

Was  it  for  this,  that  I  kissed  my  childish  hands  too  fervently 
in  your  idol-worship,  walks  and  windings  of  Blakesmoor  ! 
for  this,  or  what  sin  of  mine  has  the  plough  passed  over  your 
pleasant  places  ?  I  sometimes  think  that  as  men,  when  they  die, 
do  not  die  all,  so  of  their  extinguished  habitations  there  may  be  a 
hope — a  germ  to  be  revivified. 


POOR  RELATIONS. 


POOR  RELATIONS, 


A  Poor  Relation  is  the  most  irrelevant  thing  in  nature — a  piece 
of  impertinent  correspondency — an  odious  approximation — a 
haunting  conscience — a  preposterous  shadow,  lengthening  in  the 
noon-tide  of  our  prosperity — an  unwelcome  remembrancer — ^a 
perpetually  recurring  mortification — a  drain  on  your  purse,  a 
more  intolerable  dun  upon  your  pride — a  drawback  upon  success 
— a  rebuke  to  your  rising — a  stain  in  your  blood — a  blot  on  your 
'scutcheon — a  rent  in  your  garment — ^a  death's-head  at  your  ban- 
quet— Agathocles'  pot — a  Mordecai  in  your  gate,  a  Lazarus  at 
your  door — a  lion  in  your  path — a  frog  in  your  chamber — a  fly 
in  your  ointment — a  mote  in  your  eye — a  triumph  to  your  enemy, 
an  apology  to  your  friends — the  one  thing  not  needful — the  hail 
in  harvest — the  ounce  of  sour  in  a  pound  of  sweet. 

He  is  known  by  his  knock.  Your  heart  telleth  you  "  That  is 
Mr. ."  A  rap,  between  familiarity  and  respect ;  that  de- 
mands, and  at  the  same  time  seems  to  despair  of,  entertainment. 
He  entereth  smiling  and — embarrassed.  He  holdeth  out  his  hand 
to  you  to  shake,  and— draweth  it  back  again.  He  casually  look- 
eth  in  about  dinner-time — when  the  table  is  full.  He  offereth  to 
go  away,  seeing  you  have  company — but  is  induced  to  stay.  He 
filleth  a  chair,  and  your  visitor's  two  children  are  accommodated 
at  a  side  table.     He  never  cometh  upon  open  days,  when  your 

wife  says  with  some  complacency,  "  My  dear,  perhaps  Mr. 

will  drop  in  to-day."  He  remembereth  birth-days — and  profess- 
eth  he  is  fortunate  to  have  stumbled  upon  one.  He  declareth 
against  fish,  the  turbot  being  small — yet  he  sufFereth  himself  to 
be  importuned  into  a  slice,  against  his  first  resolution.  He  stick- 
eth  by  the  port — yet  will  be  prevailed  upon  to  empty  the  remain- 


8  ELIA. 

der  glass  of  claret,  if  a  stranger  press  it  upon  him.  He  is  a 
puzzle  to  the  servants,  who  are  fearful  of  being  too  obsequious,  or 
not  civil  enough,  to  him.  The  guests  think  "  they  have  seen 
him  before."  Every  one  speculateth  upon  his  condition;  and 
the  most  part  take  him  to  be — a  tide-waiter.  He  calleth  you  by 
your  Christian  name,  to  imply  that  his  other  is  the  same  with  your 
own.  He  is  too  familiar  by  half,  yet  you  wish  he  had  less  diffi- 
dence. With  half  the  familiarity,  he  might  pass  for  a  casual 
dependant ;  with  more  boldness,  he  would  be  in  no  danger  of  be- 
ing taken  for  what  he  is.  He  is  too  humble  for  a  friend  ;  yet 
taketh  on  him  more  state  than  befits  a  client.  He  is  a  worse 
guest  than  a  country  tenant,  inasmuch  as  he  bringeth  up  no  rent 
— ^yet  'tis  odds,  from  his  garb  and  demeanor,  that  your  guests  take 
him  for  one.  He  is  asked  to  make  one  at  the  whist  table  ;  re- 
fuseth  on  the  score  of  poverty,  and — resents  being  left  out. 
When  the  company  break  up,  he  proffereth  to  go  for  a  coach — 
and  lets  the  servant  go.  He  recollects  your  grandfather  ;  and 
will  thrust  in  some  mean  and  quite  unimportant  anecdote — of  the 
family.  He  knew  it  when  it  was  not  quite  so  flourishing  as  "  he 
is  blest  in  seeing  it  now."  He  reviveth  past  situations,  to  insti- 
tute what  he  calleth — favorable  comparisons.  With  a  reflecting 
sort  of  congratulation,  he  will  inquire  the  price  of  your  furniture  ; 
and  insults  you  with  a  special  commendation  of  your  win'dow- 
curtains.  He  is  of  opinion  that  the  urn  is  the  more  elegant  shape, 
but,  after  all,  there  was  something  more  comfortable  about  the 
old  tea-kettle — which  you  must  remember.  He  dare  say  you 
must  find  a  great  convenience  in  having  a  carriage  of  your  own, 
and  appealeth  to  your  lady  if  it  is  not  so.  Inquireth  if  you  have 
had  your  arms  done  on  vellum  yet ;  and  did  not  know,  till 
lately,  that  such-and-such  had  been  the  crest  of  the  family. 
His  memory  is  unseasonable ;  his  compliments  perverse ;  his 
talk  a  trouble  ;  his  stay  pertinacious  ;  and  when  he  goeth  away, 
you  dismiss  his  chair  in+o  a  corner,  as  precipitately  as  possible, 
and  feel  fairly  rid  of  two  nuisances. 

There  is  a  worse  evil  under  the  sun,  and  that  is — a  female 
Poor  Relation.  You  may  do  something  wilh  the  other;  you 
may  pass  him  off  tolerably  well ;  but  your  indigent  she-relative 
is  hopeless.     "  He  is  an  old  humorist,"  you  may  say,  "  and  affects 


POOR  RELATIONS. 


to  go  threadbare.  His  circumstances  are  better  than  folks 
would  take  them  to  be.  You  are  forfd  of  having  a  Character  at 
your  table,  and  truly  he  is  one."  But  in  the  indications  of 
female  poverty  there  can  be  no  disguise.  No  woman  dresses 
below  herself  from  caprice.  The  truth  must  out  without  shuf- 
fling.    "  She  is  plainly  related  to  the  L s ;  or  what  does  she 

at  their  house  ?"  She  is,  in  all  probability,  your  wife's  cousin. 
Nine  times  out  of  ten,  at  least,  this  is  the  case.  Her  garb  is 
something  between  a  gentlewoman  and  a  beggar,  yet  the  former 
evidently  predominates.  She  is  most  provokingly  humble,  and 
ostentatiously  sensible  to  her  inferiority.  He  may  require  to  be 
repressed  sometimes — aliquando  sufflaminandus  erai — but  there  is 
no  raising  her.     You  send  her  soup  at  dinner,  and  she  begs  to  be 

helped — after  the  gentlemen.     Mr. requests  the  honor  of 

taking  wine  with  her  ;  she  hesitates  between  Port  and  Madeira, 
and  chooses  the  former — because  he  does.  She  calls  the  servant 
Sir ;  and  insists  on  not  troubling  him  to  hold  her  plate.  The 
housekeeper  patronises  her.  The  children's  governess  takes  upon 
her  to  correct  her,  when  she  has  mistaken  the  piano  for  harpsichord. 
Richard  Amlet,  Esq.,  in  the  play,  is  a  notable  instance  of  the 
disadvantages  to  which  this  chimerical  notion  of  affinity  constitut- 
ing a  claim  to  acquaintance,  may  subject  the  spirit  of  a  gentleman. 
A  little  foolish  blood  is  all  that  is  betwixt  him  and  a  lady  with  a 
great  estate.  His  stars  are  perpetually  crossed  by  the  malig- 
nant maternity  of  an  old  woman,  who  persists  in  calling  him 
"  her  son  Dick."  But  she  has  wherewithal  in  the  end  to  recom- 
pense his  indignities,  and  float  him  again  upon  the  brilliant  sur- 
face, under  which  it  had  been  her  seeming  business  and  pleasure 
all  along  to  sink  him.  All  men,  besides,  are  not  of  Dick's  tem- 
perament.    I  knew  an  Amlet  in  real  life,  who,  wanting  Dick's 

buoyancy,  sank  indeed.     Poor  W was  of  my  own  standing 

at  Christ's,  a  fine  classic,  and  a  youth  of  promise.  If  he  had  a 
blemish,  it  was  too  much  pride  ;  but  its  quality  was  inoffensive ; 
it  was  not  of  that  sort  which  hardens  the  heart,  and  serves  to  keep 
inferiors  at  a  distance  ;  it  only  sought  to  ward  off*  derogation  from 
itself.  It  was  the  principle  of  self-respect  carried  as  far  as  it 
could  go,  without  infringing  upon  that  respect,  which  he  would 
have  every  one  else  equally  maintain  for  himself.     He  would 


10  ELIA. 

have  you  to  think  alike  with  him  on  this  topic.  Many  a  quarrel 
have  I  had  with  him,  wherf  we  were  rather  older  boys,  and  our 
tallness  made  us  more  obnoxious  to  observation  in  the  blue  clothes, 
because  I  would  not  thread  the  alleys  and  blind  ways  of  the  town 
with  him  to  elude  notice,  when  we  have  been  out  together  on  a 
holiday  in  the  streets  of  this  sneering  and  prying  metropoli;s. 

W went,  sore  with  these  notions,  to  Oxford,  where  the  dig. 

nity  and  sweetness  of  a  scholar's  life,  meeting  with  the  alloy  of 
an  humble  introduction,  wrought  in  him  a  passionate  devotion  to 
the  place,  with  a  profound  aversion  from  the  society.  The  ser- 
vitor's gown  (worse  than  his  school  array)  clung  to  him  with 
Nessian  venom.  He  thought  himself  ridiculous  in  a  garb,  under 
which  Latimer  must  have  walked  erect,  and  in  which  Hooker,  in 
his  young  days,  possibly  flaunted  in  a  vein  of  no  discommendable 
vanity.  In  the  depth  of  college  shades,  or  in  his  lonely  chamber, 
the  poor  student  shrank  from  observation.  He  found  shelter 
among  books,  which  insult  not ;  and  studies,  that  ask  no  questions 
of  a  youth's  finances.  He  was  lord  of  his  library,  and  seldom 
cared  for  looking  out  beyond  his  domains.  The  healing  influ- 
ence of  studious  pursuits  was  upon  him,  to  soothe  and  to  abstract. 
He  was  almost  a  healthy  man — when  the  waywardness  of  his 
fate  broke  out  against  him  with  a  second  and  worse  malignity. 
The  father  of  W had  hitherto  exercised  the  humble  profes- 
sion of  house-painter  at  N ,  near  Oxford.  A  supposed  inte- 
rest with  some  of  the  heads  of  colleges  had  now  induced  him  to 
take  up  his  abode  in  that  city,  with  the  hope  of  being  employed 
upon  some  public  works  which  were  talked  of.  From  that  moment 
I  read  in  the  countenance  of  the  young  man  the  determination 
which  at  length  tore  him  from  academical  pursuits  for  ever.  To 
a  person  unacquainted  with  our  universities,  the  distance  between 
the  gownsmen  and  the  townsmen,  as  they  are  called — the  trading 
part  of  the  latter  especially — is  carried  to  an  excess  that  would 

appear  harsh  and  incredible.     The  temperament  of  W 's 

father  was  diametrically  the   reverse  of  his  own.     Old  W 


was  a  little,  busy,  cringing  tradesman,  who,  with  his  son  upon  his 
arm,  would  stand  bowing  and  scraping,  cap  in  hand,  to  anything 
that  wore  the  semblance  of  a  gown — insensible  to  the  winks  and 
opener  remonstrances  of  the  young  man,  to  whose  chamber-fel- 


POOR  RELATIONS.  11 

low,  or  equa.  in  standing,  perhaps,  he  was  thus  obsequiously  and 
gratuitously  ducking.     Such  a  state   of  things  could  not  last. 

W must  change  the  air  of  Oxford,  or  be  suffocated.     He 

chose  the  former ;  and  let  the  sturdy  moralist,  who  strains  the 
point  of  the  filial  duties  as  high  as  they  can  bear,  censure  the 
dereliction ;    he  cannot  estimate    the    struggle.      I  stood   with 

W ,  the  last  afternoon  I  ever  saw  him,  under  the  eaves  of  his 

paternal  dwelling.     It  was  in  the  fine  lane  leading  from  the  High 

street  to  the  back  of  *  *  *  *  college,  where  W kept  his  rooms. 

He  seemed  thoughtful  and  more  reconciled.  I  ventured  to  rally 
him — finding  him  in  a  better  mood — upon  a  representation  of  the 
Artist  Evangelist,  which  the  old  man,  whose  affairs  were  begin- 
ning to  flourish,  had  caused  to  be  set  up  in  a  splendid  sort  of 
frame  over  his  really  handsome  shop,  either  as  a  token  of  pros- 
perity or  badge  of  gratitude  to  his  saint.     W looked  up  at 

the  Luke,  and,  like  Satan,  "  knew  his  mounted  sign — and  fled." 
A  letter  on  his  father's  table  the  next  morning  announced  that  he 
had  accepted  a  commission  in  a  regiment  about  to  embark  for 
Portugal.  He  was  among  the  first  who  perished  before  the  walls 
of  St.  Sebastian. 

1  do  not  know  how,  upon  a  subject  which  I  began  with  treating 
half  seriously,  I  should  have  fallen  upon  a  recital  so  eminently 
painful ;  but  this  theme  of  poor  relationship  is  replete  with  so 
much  matter  for  tragic  as  well  as  comic  associations,  that  it  is  dif- 
ficult to  keep  the  account  distinct  without  blending.  The  earliest 
impressions  which  I  received  on  this  matter,  are  certainly  not  at- 
tended with  anything  painful,  or  very  humiliating,  in  the  recall- 
ing. At  my  father's  table  (no  very  splendid  one)  was  to  be  found 
every  Saturday,  the  mysterious  figure  of  an  aged  gentleman, 
clothed  in  neat  black,  of  a  sad  yet  comely  appearance.  His  de- 
portment was  of  the  essence  of  gravity ;  his  words  few  or  none  ; 
and  I  was  not  to  make  a  noise  in  his  presence.  I  had  little  incli- 
nation to  have  done  so — for  my  cue  was  to  admire  in  silence.  A 
particular  elbow  chair  was  appropriated  to  him,  which  was  in  no 
case  to  be  violated.  A  peculiar  sort  of  sweet  pudding,  which  ap- 
peared on  no  other  occasion,  distrnguished  the  days  of  his  coming. 
I  used  to  think  him  a  prodigiously  rich  man.  All  I  could  make 
out  of  him  was,  that  he  and  my  father  had  been  schoolfellows,  a 


12  ELIA. 

world  ago,  at  Lincoln,  and  that  he  came  from  the  Mint.  The 
Mint  I  knew  to  be  a  place  where  all  the  money  was  coined — and 
I  thought  he  was  the  owner  of  all  that  money.  Awful  ideas  of 
the  Tower  twined  themselves  about  his  presence.  He  seemed 
above  human  infirmities  and  passions.  A  sort  of  melancholy 
grandeur  invested  him.  From  some  inexplicable  doom  1  fancied 
him  obliged  to  go  about  in  an  eternal  suit  of  mournmg ;  a  captive 
— a  stately  being,  let  out  of  the  Tower  on  Saturdays.  Often  have 
I  wondered  at  the  temerity  of  my  father,  who,  in  spite  of  an 
habitual  general  respect  which  wo  all  in  common  manifested 
towards  him,  would  venture  now  and  then  to  stand  up  against  him 
in  some  argument,  touching  their  youthful  days.  The  houses  of 
the  ancient  city  of  Lincoln  are  divided  (as  most  of  my  readers 
know)  J)etween  the  dwellers  on  the  hill  and  in  the  valley.  This 
marked  distinction  formed  an  obvious  division  between  the  boys 
who  lived  above  (however  brought  together  in  a  common  school) 
and  the  boys  whose  paternal  residence  was  on  the  plain  ;  a  suf- 
ficient cause  of  hostility  in  the  code  of  these  young  Grotiuses.  My 
father  had  been  a  leading  Mountaineer ;  and  would  still  maintain 
the  general  superiority,  in  skill  and  hardihood,  of  the  Above  Boys 
(his  own  faction)  over  the  Below  Boys  (so  were  they  called),  of 
which  party  his  contemporary  had  been  a  chieftain.  Many  and 
hot  were  the  skirmishes  on  this  topic — the  only  one  upon  which 
the  old  gentleman  was  ever  brought  out — and  bad  blood  bred ; 
even  sometimes  almost  to  the  recommencement  (so  I  expected)  of 
actual  hostilities.  But  my  father,  who  scorned  to  insist  upon  ad- 
vantages, generally  contrived  to  turn  the  conversation  upon  some 
adroit  by-commendation  of  the  old  Minster ;  in  the  general  pre- 
ference of  which,  before  all  other  cathedrals  in  the  island,  the 
dweller  on  the  hill  and  the  plain-born,  could  meet  on  a  conciliating 
level,  and  lay  down  their  less  important  differences.  Once  only 
I  saw  the  old  gentleman  really  ruffled,  and  I  remembered  with 
anguish  the  thought  that  came  over  me  :  "  Perhaps  he  will  never 
come  here  again."  He  had  been  pressed  to  take  another  plate 
of  the  viand,  which  I  have  already  mentioned  as  the  indispensable 
concomitant  of  his  visits.  He  had  refused  with  a  resistance 
amounting  to  rigor — when  my  aunt,  an  old  Lincolnian,  but  who 
had  something  of  this,  in  common  with  my  cousin  Bridget,  that 


POOR  RELATIONS.  13 


she  would  sometimes  press  civility  out  of  season — uttered  the  fol- 
lowing memorable  application — "  Do  take  another  slice,  Mr.  Billet, 
for  you  do  not  get  pudding  every  day."  The  old  gentleman  said 
nothing  at  the  time — but  he  took  occasion  in  the  course  of  the 
evening,  when  some  argument  had  intervened  between  them,  to 
utter  with  an  emphasis  which  chilled  the  company,  and  which 
chills  me  now  as  I  write  it — "  Woman,  you  are  superannuated !" 
John  Billet  did  not  survive  long,  after  the  digesting  of  this  affront ; 
but  he  survived  long  enough  to  assure  me  that  peace  was  actually 
restored !  and,  if  I  remember  aright,  another  pudding  was  dis- 
creetly substituted  in  the  place  of  that  which  had  occasioned  the 
offence.  He  died  at  the  Mint  (anno  1781),  where  he  had  long 
held,  what  he  accounted,  a  comfortable  independence  ;  and  with 
five  pounds,  fourteen  shillings,  and  a  penny,  which  were  found  in 
his  escrutoire,  after  his  decease,  left  the  world,  blessing  God  that 
he  had  enough  to  bury  him,  and  that  he  had  never  been  obliged 
to  any  man  for  a  sixpence.     This  was — a  Poor  Relation. 


14  ELIA. 


DETACHED  THOUGHTS  ON  BOOKS  AND  READING. 


To  mind  the  inside  of  a  book  is  to  entertain  one's  self  with  the  forced 
product  of  another  man's  brain.  Now  I  think  a  man  of  quality  and  breeding 
may  be  much  amused  with  the  natural  sprouts  of  his  own. 

Lord  Foppingtotii  in  the  Relapse. 

An  ingenious  acquaintance  of  my  own  was  so  much  struck  with 
this  bright  sally  of  his  Lordship,  that  he  has  left  off  reading  alto- 
gether, to  the  great  improvement  of  his  originality.  At  the  hazard 
of  losing  some  credit  on  this  head,  I  must  confess  that  I  dedicate 
no  inconsiderable  portion  of  my  time  to  other  people's  thoughts. 
I  dream  away  my  life  in  others'  speculations.  I  love  to  lose  my- 
self in  other  men's  minds.  When  I  am  not  walking,  I  am  read- 
ing ;  I  cannot  sit  and  think.     Books  think  for  me. 

I  have  no  repugnances.  Shaftesbury  is  not  too  genteel  for  me, 
nor  Jonathan  Wild  too  low.  I  can  read  anything  which  I  call  a 
book.  There  are  things  in  that  shape  which  I  cannot  allow 
fo^  such. 

In  this  catalogue  of  books  which  are  no  books — biblia  a-biblia — 
I  reckon  Court  Calendars,  Directories,  Pocket-Books,  Draught 
Boards,  bound  and  lettered  on  the  back,  Scientific  Treatises, 
Almanacks,  Statutes  at  Large :  the  works  of  Hume,  Gibbon,  Ro- 
bertson, Beattie,  Soame  Jenyns,  and  generally  all  those  volumes 
which  "no  gentleman's  library  should  be  without:"  the  Histories 
of  Flavins  Josephus  (that  learned  Jew),  and  Paley's  Moral  Philo- 
sophy. With  these  exceptions,  I  can  read  almost  anything.  I 
bless  my  stars  for  a  taste  so  catholic,  so  unexcluding. 

I  confess  that  it  moves  my  spleen  to  see  these  things  in  books' 
clothing  perched  upon  shelves  like  false  saints,  usurpers  of  true 
shrines,  intruders  into  the  sanctuary,  thrusting  out  the  legitimate 


DETACHED  THOUGHTS  ON  BOOKS  AND  READING    15 

occupants.  To  reach  down  a  well-bound  semblance  of  a  volume, 
and  hope  it  some  kind-hearted  play-book,  then,  opening  what 
"  seem  its  leaves,"  to  come  bolt  upon  a  withering  Population  Es- 
say. To  expect  a  Steele,  or  a  Farquhar,  and  find — Adam  Smith. 
To  view  a  well-arranged  assortment  of  block-headed  Encyclopae- 
dias (Anglicanas  or  Metropolitanas)  set  out  in  an  array  of  russia, 
or  morocco,  when  a  tithe  of  that  good  leather  would  comfortably 
reclothe  my  shivering  folios ;  would  renovate  Paracelsus  himself, 
and  enable  old  Raymund  Lully  to  look  like  himself  again  in  the 
world.  I  never  see  these  impostors,  but  I  long  to  strip  them,  to 
warm  my  ragged  veterans  in  their  spoils. 

To  be  strong-backed  and  neat-bound  is  the  desideratum  of  a 
volume.  Magnificence  comes  after.  This,  when  it  can  be 
afforded,  is  not  to  be  lavished  upon  all  kinds  of  books  indiscrimi- 
nately. I  would  not  dress  a  set  of  Magazines,  for  instance,  in 
full  suit.  The  dishabille,  or  half-binding  (with  russia  backs  ever) 
is  our  costume.  A  Shakspeare,  or  a  Milton  (unless  the  first 
editions),  it  were  mere  foppery  to  trick  out  in  gay  apparel.  The 
possession  of  them  confers  no  distinction.  The  exterior  of  them 
(the  things  themselves  being  so  common),  strange  to  say,  raises  no 
sweet  emotions,  no  tickling  sense  of  property  in  the  owner. 
Thomson's  Seasons,  again,  looks  best  (I  maintain  it)  a  little  torn 
and  dog's-eared.  How  beautiful  to  a  genuine  lover  of  reading  are 
the  sullied  leaves,  and  worn-out  appearance,  nay  the  very  odor 
(beyond  russia),  if  we  would  not  forget  kind  feelings  in  fastidious- 
ness, of  an  old  "  Circulating  Library  "  Tom  Jones,  or  Vicar  of 
Wakefield !  How  they  speak  of  the  thousand  thumbs  that  have 
turned  over  their  pages  with  delight ! — of  the  lone  sempstress, 
whom  they  may  have  cheered  (milliner,  or  hard-working  mantua- 
maker)  after  her  long  day's  needle-toil,  running  far  into  midnight, 
when  she  has  snatched  an  hour,  ill  spared  from  sleep,  to  steep 
her  cares,  as  in  some  Lethean  cup,  in  spelling  out  their  enchant- 
ing contents  !  Who  would  have  them  a  whit  less  soiled  ?  What 
better  condition  could  we  desire  to  see  them  in  ? 

In  some  respects  the  better  a  book  is,  the  less  it  demands  from 
binding.  Fielding,  Smollett,  Sterne,  and  all  that  class  of  perpetu- 
ally self-reproductive  volumes — Great  Nature's  Stereotypes — we 
see  them  individually  perish  with  less  regret,  because  we  know 


18  ELIA, 

the  copies  of  them  to  be  "  eterne."  But  where  a  book  is  at  once 
both  good  and  rare — where  the  individual  is  ahiiost  the  species, 
and  when  that  perishes, 

We  know  not  where  is  that  Promethean  torch 
That  can  its  light  relumine — 

such  a  book,  for  instance,  as  the  Life  of  the  Duke  of  Newcastle, 
by  his  Duchess — no  casket  is  rich  enough,  no  casing  sufficiently 
durable,  to  honor  and  keep  such  a  jewel  safe. 

Not  only  rare  volumes  of  this  description,  which  seem  hopeless 
ever  to  be  reprinted ;  but  old  editions  of  writers,  such  as  Sir 
Philip  Sydney,  Bishop  Taylor,  Milton  in  his  prose  works,  Fuller — 
of  whom  we  have  reprints,  yet  the  books  themselves,  though  they 
go  about,  and  are  talked  of  here  and  there,  we  know,  have  not 
endenizened  themselves  (nor  possibly  ever  will)  in  the  national 
heart,  so  as  to  become  stock  books — it  is  good  to  possess  these  in 
durable  and  costly  covers.  I  do  not  care  for  a  First  Folio  of 
Shakspeare.  I  rather  prefer  the  common  editions  of  Rowe  and 
Tonson,  without  notes,  and  with  plates,  which,  being  so  execrably 
bad,  serve  as  maps,  or  modest  remembrancers,  to  the  text ;  and 
without  pretending  to  any  supposable  emulation  with  it,  are  so 
much  better  than  the  Shakspeare  gallery  engravings,  which  did. 
I  have  a  community  of  feeling  with  my  countrymen  about  his 
Plays,  and  I  like  those  editions  of  him  best,  which  have  been 
oftenest  tumbled  about  and  handled. — On  the  contrary,  I  cannot 
read  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  but  in  Folio.  The  Octavo  editions 
are  painful  to  look  at.  I  have  no  sympathy  with  them.  If  they 
were  as  nmch  read  as  the  current  editions  of  the  other  poet,  I 
should  prefer  them  in  that  shape  to  the  older  one.  I  do  not  know 
a  more  heartless  sight  than  the  reprint  of  the  Anatomy  of  Melan- 
choly. What  need  was  there  of  unearthing  the  bones  of  that  fan- 
tastic old  great  man,  to  expose  them  in  a  winding-sheet  of  the 
newest  fashion  to  modern  censure  ?  what  hapless  stationer  could 
dream  of  Burton  ever  becoming  popular  ? — The  wretched  Malone 
could  not  do  worse,  when  he  bribed  the  sexton  of  Stratford  church 
to  let  him  whitewash  the  painted  effigy  of  old  Shakspeare,  which 
stood  there,  in  rude  but  lively  fashion  depicted,  to  the  very  color 
of  the  cheek,  the  eye,  the  eye-brow,  hair,  the  very  dress  he  used 


{ 


DETACHED  THOUGHTS  ON  BOOKS  AND  READING.        17 

to  wear — the  only  authentic  testimony  we  had,  however  imperfect, 
of  these  curious  parts  and  parcels  of  him.  They  covered  him 
over  with  a  coat  of  white  paint.  By ,  if  I  had  been  a  jus- 
tice of  peace  for  Warwickshire,  I  would  have  clapt  both  com- 
mentator and  sexton  fast  in  the  stocks,  for  a  pair  of  meddling 
sacrilegious  varlets. 

I  think  I  see  them  at  their  work — these  sapient  trouble-tombs. 

Shall  I  be  thought  fantastical,  if  I  confess,  that  the  names  o* 
some  of  our  poets  sound  sweeter,  and  have  a  finer  relish  to  the 
ear — to  mine,  at  least — than  that  of  Milton  or  of  Shakspeare  ? 
It  may  be,  that  the  latter  are  more  staled  and  rung  upon  in  com- 
mon discourse.  The  sweetest  names,  and  which  carry  a  perfume 
in  the  mention,  are.  Kit  Marlowe,  Drayton,  Drummond  of  Haw- 
thornden,  and  Cowley. 

Much  depends  upon  when  and  where  you  read  a  book.  In  the 
five  or  six  impatient  minutes,  before  the  dinner  is  quite  ready,  who 
would  think  of  taking  up  the  Fairy  Queen  for  a  stop-gap,  or  a 
volume  of  Bishop  Andrewes'  sermons  ? 

Milton  almost  requires  a  solemn  service  of  music  to  be  played 
before  you  enter  upon  him.  But  he  brings  his  music,  to  which, 
who  listens,  had  need  bring  docile  thoughts,  and  purged  ears. 

Winter  evenings — the  world  shut  out — with  less  of  ceremony 
the  gentle  Shakspeare  enters.  At  such  a  season,  the  Tempest,  or 
his  own  Winter's  Tale — 

These  two  poets  you  cannot  avoid  reading  aloud — to  yourself, 
or  (as  it  chances)  to  some  single  person  listening.  More  than  one 
• — and  it  degenerates  into  an  audience. 

Books  of  quick  interest,  that  hurry  on  for  incidents,  are  for  the 
eye  to  glide  over  only.  It  will  not  do  to  read  them  out.  I  could 
never  listen  to  even  the  better  kind  of  modern  novels  without  ex- 
treme irksomeness. 

A  newspaper,  read  out,  is  intolerable.  In  some  of  the  Bank 
offices  it  is  the  custom  (to  save  so  much  individual  time)  for  one 
of  the  clerks — who  is  the  best  scholar — ^to  commence  upon  the 
Times,  or  the  Chronicle,  and  recite  its  entire  contents  aloud,  pro 
hono  publico.  With  every  advantage  of  lungs  and  elocution,  the 
effect  is  singularly  vapid.  In  barbers'  shops  and  public-houses 
a  fellow  will  get  up  and  spell  out  a  paragraph,  which  he  commu- 

PART  II.  3 


18  ELIA. 

nicates  as  some  discovery.  Another  follows  with  his  selection. 
So  the  entire  journal  transpires  at  length  by  piece-meal.  Seldom- 
readers  are  slow  readers,  and,  without  this  expedient,  no  one  in 
the  company  would  probably  ever  travel  through  the  contents  of 
a  whole  paper. 

Newspapers  always  excite  curiosity.  No  one  ever  lays  one 
down  without  a  feeling  of  disappointment. 

What  an  eternal  time  that  gentleman  in  black,  at  Nando's, 
keeps  the  paper !  I  am  sick  of  hearing  the  waiter  bawling  out 
incessantly,  "  The  Chronicle  is  in  hand.  Sir." 

Coming  in  to  an  inn  at  night — having  ordered  your  supper — what 
can  be  more  delightful  than  to  find  lying  in  the  window-seat,  left 
there  time  out  of  mind  by  the  carelessness  of  some  former  guest 
— ^two  or  three  numbers  of  the  old  Town  and  Country  Magazine, 
with  its  amusing  tete-d-tete  pictures — "  The  Royal  Lover  and 

Lady  G ;"  "  The  Melting  Platonic  and  the  old  Beau,"— and 

such-like  antiquated  scandal  ?  Would  you  exchange  it — at  that 
time,  and  in  that  place — for  a  better  book  ? 

Poor  Tobin,  who  latterly  fell  blind,  did  not  regret  it  so  much 
for  the  weightier  kinds  of  reading — the  Paradise  Lost,  or  Comus, 
he  could  have  read  to  him — but  he  missed  the  pleasure  of  skim- 
ming over  with  his  own  eye  a  magazine,  or  a  light  pamphlet. 

I  should  not  care  to  be  caught  in  tiie  serious  avenues  of  some 
cathedral  alone,  and  reading  Candide. 

I  do  not  remember  a  more  whimsical  surprise  than  having  been 
once  detected — by  a  familiar  damsel — reclined  at  my  ease  upon 
the  grass,  on  Primrose  Hill  (her  Cythera),  reading — Pamela. 
There  was  nothing  in  the  book  to  make  a  man  seriously  ashamed  at 
the  exposure ;  but  as  she  seated  herself  down  by  me,  and  seemed 
determined  to  read  in  company,  I  could  have  wished  it  had  been 
— any  other  book.  We  read  on  very  sociably  for  a  few  pages  ; 
and,  not  finding  the  author  much  to  her  taste,  she  got  up,  and — 
went  away.  Gentle  casuist,  I  leave  it  to  thee  to  conjecture, 
whether  the  blush  (for  there  was  one  between  us)  was  the  pro- 
perty of  the  nymph  or  the  swain  in  this  dilemma.  From  me  you 
shall  never  get  the  secret. 

I  am  not  much  the  friend  to  out-of-doors  reading.  I  cannot 
settle  my  spirits  to  it.     I  knew  a  Unitarian  minister,  who  was 


DETACHED  THOUGHTS  ON  BOOKS  AND  READING.        19 

generally  to  be  seen  upon  Snow-hill  (as  yet  Skinner's-street  was 
not),  between  the  hours  of  ten  and  eleven  in  the  morning,  study- 
ing a  volume  of  Lardner.  I  own  this  to  have  been  a  strain  of 
abstraction  beyond  my  reach.  I  used  to  admire  how  he  sidled 
along,  keeping  clear  of  secular  contacts.  An  illiterate  encounter 
with  a  porter's  knot,  or  a  bread-basket,  would  have  quickly  put 
to  flight  all  the  theology  I  am  master  of,  and  have  left  me  worse 
than  indifferent  to  the  five  points. 

There  is  a  class  of  street-readers,  whom  I  can  never  contem- 
plate without  affection — the  poor  gentry,  who,  not  having  where- 
withal to  buy  or  hire  a  book,  filch  a  little  learning  at  the  open 
stalls — the  owner,  with  his  hard  eye,  casting  envious  looks  at 
them  all  the  while,  and  thinking  when  they  will  have  done.  Ven- 
turing tenderly,  page  after  page,  expecting  every  moment  when 
*     shall  interpose  his  interdict,  and  yet  unable  to  deny  themselves 

the  gratification,  they  "  snatch  a  fearful  joy."     Martin  B ,  in 

this  way,  by  daily  fragments,  got  through  two  volumes  of  Cla- 
rissa, when  the  stall-keeper  damped  his  laudable  ambition,  by 
asking  him  (it  was  in  his  younger  days)  whether  he  meant  to 
purchase  the  work.  M.  declares,  that  under  no  circumstance  in 
his  life  did  he  ever  peruse  a  book  with  half  the  satisfaction  which 
he  took  in  those  uneasy  snatches.  A  quaint  poetess  of  our  day 
has  moralized  upon  this  subject  in  two  very  touching  but  homely 
stanzas. 

I  saw  a  boy  with  eager  eye 

Open  a  book  upon  a  stall. 

And  read,  as  he'd  devour  it  all ; 

Which  when  the  stall-man  did  espy. 

Soon  to  the  boy  I  heard  him  call, 

"  You,  Sir,  you  never  buy  a  book. 

Therefore  in  one  you  shall  not  look." 

The  boy  pass'd  slowly  on,  and  with  a  sigh 

He  wish'd  he  never  had  been  taught  to  read. 

Then  of  the  old  churl's  books  he  should  have  had  no  need. 

Of  sufferings  the  poor  have  many. 
Which  never  can  the  rich  annoy  : 
I  soon  perceived  another  boy. 
Who  look'd  as  if  he  had  not  any 
Food,  for  that  day  at  least— enjoy 


20  ELIA. 

The  sight  of  cold  meat  in  a  tavern  larder. 

This  boy's  case,  then  thought  I,  is  surely  harder. 

Thus  hungry,  longing,  thus  without  a  penny. 

Beholding  choice  of  dainty -dressed  meat : 

No  wonder  if  he  wish  he  ne'er  had  learned  to  eat. 


1 


STAGE  ILLUSION.  21 


STAGE  ILLUSION 


A  PLAY  is  said  to  be  well  or  ill  acted,  in  proportion  to  the  scenical 
illusion  produced.  Whether  such  illusion  can  in  any  case  be 
perfect,  is  not  the  question.  The  nearest  approach  to  it,  we  are 
told,  is,  when  the  actor  appears  wholly  unconscious  of  the  pre- 
sence of  spectators.  In  tragedy — in  all  which  is  to  affect  the 
feelings — this  undivided  attention  to  his  stage  business  seems  in- 
dispensable. Yet  it  is,  in  fact,  dispensed  with  every  day  by  our 
cleverest  tragedians ;  and  while  these  references  to  an  audience, 
in  the  shape  of  rant  or  sentiment,  are  not  too  frequent  or  palpa- 
ble, a  sufficient  quantity  of  illusion  for  the  purposes  of  the  dra- 
matic interest  may  be  said  to  be  produced  in  spite  of  them.  But, 
tragedy  apart,  it  may  be  inquired  whether,  in  certain  characters 
in  comedy,  especially  those  which  are  a  little  extravagant,  or 
which  involve  some  notion  repugnant  to  the  moral  sense,  it  is  not 
a  proof  of  the  highest  skill  in  the  comedian  when,  without  abso- 
lutely appealing  to  an  audience,  he  keeps  up  a  tacit  understand- 
ing with  them  ;  and  makes  them,  unconsciously  to  themselves,  a 
party  in  the  scene.  The  utmost  nicety  is  required  in  the  mode 
of  doing  this ;  but  we  speak  only  of  the  great  artists  in  the  pro- 
fession. 

The  most  mortifying  infirmity  in  human  nature,  to  feel  in  our- 
selves, or  to  contemplate  in  another,  is,  perhaps,  cowardice.  To 
see  a  coward  done  to  the  life  upon  a  stage  would  produce  anything 
but  mirth.  Yet  we  most  of  us  remember  Jack  Bannister's  cow- 
ards. Could  anything  be  more  agreeable,  more  pleasant  ?  We 
loved  the  rogues.  How  was  this  effected  but  by  the  exquisite  art 
of  the  actor  in  a  perpetual  sub-insinuation  to  us,  the  spectators, 
even  in  the  extremity  of  the  shaking  fit,  that  he  was  not  half  such 


22  ELIA. 

a  coward  as  we  took  him  for  ?  We  saw  all  the  common  symp 
toms  of  the  malady  upon  him ;  the  quivering  lip,  the  cowering 
knees,  the  leeth  chattering ;  and  could  have  sworn  "  that  man 
was  frightened."  But  we  forgot  all  the  while — or  kept  it  almost 
a  secret  to  ourselves — that  he  never  once  lost  his  self-possession ; 
that  he  let  out  by  a  thousand  droll  looks  and  gestures — meant  at 
us,  and  not  at  all  supposed  to  be  visible  to  his  fellows  in  the  scene, 
that  his  confidence  in  his  own  resources  had  never  once  deserted 
him.  Was  this  a  genuine  picture  of  a  coward  ?  or  not  rather  a 
likeness,  which  the  clever  artist  contrived  to  palm  upon  us  in- 
stead of  an  original ;  while  we  secretly  connived  at  the  delusion 
for  the  purpose  of  greater  pleasure,  than  a  more  genuine  coun- 
terfeiting of  the  imbecility,  helplessness,  and  utter  self-desertion, 
which  we  know  to  be  concomitants  of  cowardice  in  real  life, 
could  have  given  us  ? 

Why  are  misers  so  hateful  in  the  world,  and  so  endurable  on 
the  stage,  but  because  the  skilful  actor,  by  a  sort  of  sub-refer- 
ence, rather  than  direct  appeal  to  us,  disarms  the  character  of  a 
great  deal  of  its  odiousness,  by  seeming  to  engage  our  compas- 
sion for  the  insecure  tenure  by  which  he  holds  his  money-bags 
and  parchments  ?  By  this  subtle  vent  half  of  the  hatefulness 
of  the  character — the  self-closeness  with  which  in  real  life  it 
coils  itself  up  from  the  sympathies  of  men — evaporates.  The 
miser  becomes  sympathetic ;  i.  e.  is  no  genuine  miser.  Here 
again  a  diverting  likeness  is  substituted  for  a  very  disagreeable 
reality. 

Spleen,  irritability — the  pitiable  infirmities  of  old  men,  which 
produce  only  pain  to  behold  in  the  realities,  counterfeited  upon  a 
stage,  divert  not  altogether  for  the  comic  appendages  to  them,  but 
in  part  from  an  inner  conviction  that  they  are  heing  acted  before 
us ;  that  a  likeness  only  is  going  on,  and  not  the  thing  itself. 
They  please  by  being  done  under  the  life,  or  beside  it ;  not  to  the 
life.  When  Gattie  acts  an  old  man,  is  he  angry  indeed  ?  or  only 
a  pleasant  counterfeit,  just  enough  of  a  likeness  to  recognize, 
without  pressing  upon  us  the  uneasy  sense  of  a  reality  ? 

Comedians,  paradoxical  as  it  may  seem,  may  be  too  natural. 
It  was  the  case  with  a  late  actor.  Nothing  could  be  more  ear- 
nest or  true  than  the  manner  of  Mr.  Emery  ;  this  told  excellently 


STAGE  ILLUSION.  23 


in  his  Tyke,  and  characters  of  a  tragic  cast.  But  when  he  car- 
ried the  same  rigid  exclusiveness  of  attention  to  the  stage  busi- 
ness, and  wilful  blindness  and  oblivion  of  everything  before  the 
curtain  into  his  comedy,  it  produced  a  harsh  and  dissonant  effect. 
He  was  out  of  keeping  with  the  rest  of  the  Personce  Dramatis. 
There  was  as  little  link  between  him  and  them,  as  betwixt  him- 
self and  the  audience.  He  was  a  third  estate,  dry,  repulsive,  and 
unsocial  to  all.  Individually  considered,  his  execution  was  mas- 
terly. But  comedy  is  not  this  unbending  thing  ;  for  this  reason, 
that  the  same  degree  of  credibility  is  not  required  of  it  as  to  seri-. 
ous  scenes.  The  degrees  of  credibility  demanded  to  the  two 
things,  may  be  illustrated  by  the  different  sort  of  truth  which  we 
expect  when  a  man  tells  us  a  mournful  or  a  merry  story.  If  we 
suspect  the  former  of  falsehood  in  any  one  tittle,  we  reject  it  alto- 
gether. Our  tears  refuse  to  flow  at  a  suspected  imposition.  But 
the  teller  of  a  mirthful  tale  has  latitude  allowed  him.  We  are 
content  with  less  than  absolute  truth.  'Tis  the  same  with  dra- 
matic illusion.  We  confess  we  love  in  comedy  to  see  an  audi- 
ence naturalized  behind  the  scenes,  taken  into  the  interest  of  the 
drama,  welcomed  as  bystanders  however.  There  is  something 
ungracious  in  a  comic  actor  holding  himself  aloof  from  all  parti- 
cipation or  concern  with  those  who  are  come  to  be  diverted  by 
him.  Macbeth  must  see  the  dagger,  and  no  ear  but  his  own  be 
told  of  it ;  but  an  old  fool  in  farce  may  think  that  he  sees  some- 
things and  by  conscious  words  and  looks  express  it,  as  plainly  as 
he  can  speak,  to  pit,  box,  and  gallery.  When  an  impertinent  in 
tragedy,  as  Osric,  for  instance,  breaks  in  upon  the  serious  pas- 
sions of  the  scene,  we  approve  of  the  contempt  with  which  he  is 
treated.  But  when  the  pleasant  impertinent  of  comedy,  in  a 
piece  purely  meant  to  give  delight,  and  raise  mirth  out  of  whim- 
sical perplexities,  worries  the  studious  man  with  taking  up  his 
leisure,  or  making  his  house  his  home,  the  same  sort  of  contempt 
expressed  (however  natural)  would  destroy  the  balance  of  delight 
in  the  spectators.  To  make  the  intrusion  comic,  the  actor  who 
plays  the  annoyed  man  must  a  little  desert  nature  ;  he  must,  in 
short,  be  thinking  of  the  audience,  and  express  only  so  much  dis- 
satisfaction and  peevishness  as  is  consistent  with  the  pleasure  of 
comedy.     In  other  words,  his  perplexity  must  seem  half  put  on. 


•24  ELIA. 

If  he  repel  the  intruder  with  the  sober  set  face  of  a  man  in  ear- 
nest, and  more  especially  if  he  deliver  his  expostulations  in  a  tone 
which  in  the  world  must  necessarily  provoke  a  duel ;  his  real-life 
manner  will  destroy  the  whimsical  and  purely  dramatic  existence 
of  the  other  character  (which  to  render  it  comic  demands  an  an- 
tagonist comicality  on  the  part  of  the  character  opposed  to  it),  and 
convert  what  was  meant  for  mirth,  rather  than  belief,  into  a 
downright  piece  of  impertinence  indeed,  which  would  raise  no 
diversion  in  us,  but  rather  stir  pain,  to  see  inflicted  in  earnest 
upon  any  unworthy  person.  A  very  judicious  actor  (in  most  of 
his  parts)  seems  to  have  fallen  into  an  error  of  this  sort  in  his 
playing  with  Mr.  Wrench  in  the  farce  of  Free  and  Easy. 

Many  instances  would  be  tedious ;  these  may  suffice  to  show 
that  comic  acting  at  least  does  not  always  demand  from  the  per- 
former that  strict  abstraction  from  all  reference  to  an  audience 
which  is  exacted  of  it ;  but  that  in  some  cases  a  sort  of  compro- 
mise may  take  place,  and  all  the  purposes  of  dramatic  delight  be 
attained  by  a  judicious  understanding,  not  too  openly  announced, 
between  the  ladies  and  gentlemen — on  both  sides  of  the  curtain. 


TO  THE  SHADE  OF  ELLISTON.  25 


TO   THE    SHADE   OF   ELLISTON 


JoYOUSEST  of  once  embodied  spirits,  whither  at  length  hast  thou 
flown  ?  to  what  genial  region  are  we  permitted  to  conjecture  that 
thou  hast  flitted  ? 

Art  thou  sowing  thy  wild  oats  yet  (the  harvest  time  was  still 
to  come  with  thee)  upon  casual  sands  of  Avemus  ?  or  art  thou 
enacting  Rover  (as  we  would  gladlier  think)  by  wandering  Ely- 
sian  streams  ? 

This  mortal  frame,  while  thou  didst  play  thy  brief  antics 
amongst  us,  was  in  truth  anything  but  a  prison  to  thee,  as  the 
vain  Platonist  dreams  of  this  body  to  be  no  better  than  a  county 
gaol,  forsooth,  or  some  house  of  durance  vile,  whereof  the  five 
senses  are  the  fetters.  Tliou  knewest  better  than  to  be  in  a 
hurry  to  cast  off  those  gyves ;  and  had  notice  to  quit,  I  fear,  be- 
fore thou  wert  quite  ready  to  abandon  this  fleshy  tenement.  It 
was  thy  Pleasure-House,  thy  Palace  of  Dainty  Devices:  thy 
Louvre,  or  thy  White-Hall. 

What  new  mysterious  lodgings  dost  thou  tenant  now  ?  or  when 
may  we  expect  thy  aerial  house-warming  ? 

Tartarus  we  know,  and  we  have  read  of  the  Blessed  Shades ; 
now  cannot  I  intelligibly  fancy  thee  in  either. 

Is  it  too  much  to  hazard  a  conjecture,  that  (as  tlie  schoolmen 
admitted  a  receptacle  apart  for  Patriarchs  and  un-chrisom  babes) 
there  may  exist — not  far  perchance  from  that  store-house  of  all 
vanities,  which  Milton  saw  in  vision — a  Libibo  somewhere  for 
Players  ?  and  that 

Up  thither  like  aerial  vapors  fly 

Both  all  Stage  things,  and  all  that  in  Stage  things 

Built  their  fond  hopes  of  glory,  or  lasting  fame  ? 


26  ELIA. 

All  the  unaccomplished  works  of  Authors'  hands. 
Abortive,  monstrous,  or  unkindly  mixed, 
Damn'd  upon  earth,  fleet  thither — 
Play,  Opera,  P^arce,  with  all  their  trumpery. — 

There  by  the  neighboring  moon  (by  some  not  improperly  sup. 
posed  thy  Regent  Planet  upon  eartli),  mayst  thou  not  still  be  act- 
ing thy  managerial  pranks,  great  disembodied  Lessee  ?  but  Les- 
see still,  and  still  a  manager. 

In  Green  Rooms,  impervious  to  mortal  eye,  the  muse  beholds 
thee  wielding  posthumous  empire. 

Thin  ghosts  of  Figurantes  (never  plump  on  earth)  circle  thee 
in  endlessly,  and  still  their  song  is  Fie  on  sinful  Phantasy  f 

Magnificent  were  thy  capriccios  on  this  globe  of  earth,  Robert 
William  Elliston  !  for  as  yet  we  know  not  thy  new  name  in 
heaven. 

It  irks  me  to  think,  that,  stript  of  thy  regalities,  thou  shouldst 
ferry  over,  a  poor  forked  shade,  in  crazy  Stygian  wherry.  Me- 
thinks  I  hear  the  old  boatman,  paddling  by  the  weedy  wharf, 
with  raucid  voice,  bawling  "  Sculls,  Sculls  :"  to  which,  with 
waving  hand,  and  majestic  action,  thou  deignest  no  reply,  other 
than  in  two  curt  monosyllables,  "  No  :  Oars." 

But  the  laws  of  Pluto's  kingdom  know  small  difference  between 
king,  and  cobbler ;  manager,  and  call-boy  ;  and,  if  haply  your 
dates  of  life  were  conterminant,  you  are  quietly  taking  your  pas- 
sage, cheek  by  cheek  (O  ignoble  levelling  of  Death)  with  the 
shade  of  some  recently  departed  candle-snuffer. 

But  mercy !  what  strippings,  what  tearing  off  of  histrionic 
robes,  and  private  vanities !  what  denudations  to  the  bone,  before 
the  surly  Ferryman  will  admit  you  to  set  a  foot  within  his  bat- 
tered lighter. 

Crowns,  sceptres  ;  shield,  sword,  and  truncheon  ;  thy  own  coro- 
nation robes  (for  thou  hast  brought  the  whole  property-man's 
wardrobe  with  thee,  enough  to  sink  a  navy)  ;  the  judge's  ermine ; 
the  coxcomb's  wig ;  the  snuff-box  a  la  Foppington — all  must  over- 
board,  he  positively  swears — and  that  Ancient  Mariner  brooks  no 
denial ;  for,  since  the  tiresome  monodrame  of  the  old  Thracian 
Harper,  Charon,  it  is  to  be  believed,  hath  shown  small  taste  for 
theatricals. 


TO  THE  SHADE  OF  ELLISTON.  29 

Ay,  now  'tis  done.  You  are  just  boat- weight ;  pura  et  puia 
anima. 

But,  bless  me,  how  little  you  look ! 

So  shall  we  all  look — kings  and  keysars — stripped  for  the  last 
voyage. 

But  the  murky  rogue  pushes  off.  Adieu,  pleasant,  and  thrice 
pleasant  shade  !  with  my  parting  thanks  for  many  a  heavy  hour, 
of  life  lightened  by  thy  harmless  extravaganzas,  public  or  do- 
mestic. 

Rhadamanthus,  who  tries  the  lighter  causes  below,  leaving  to 
his  two  brethren  the  heavy  calendars — honest  Rhadamanth,  always 
partial  to  players,  weighing  their  parti-colored  existence  here  upon 
earth, — making  account  of  the  few  foibles  that  may  have  shaded 
thy  real  life,  as  we  call  it  (though,  substantially,  scarcely  less  a 
vapor  than  thy  idlest  vagaries  upon  the  boards  of  Drury),  as  but 
of  so  many  echoes,  natural  re-percussions,  and  results  to  be  ex- 
pected from  the  assumed  extravagancies  of  thy  secondary  or  mock 
life,  nightly  upon  the  stage — after  a  lenient  castigation,  with  rods 
lighter  than  those  of  Medusean  ringlets,  but  just  enough  to  "  whip 
the  offending  Adam  out  of  thee,"  shall  courteously  dismiss  thee 
at  the  right  hand  gate — the  o.  p.  side  of  Hades — that  conducts  to 
masques  and  merry-makings  in  the  Theatre  Royal  of  Proserpine. 


ELIA 


EILISTONIANA 


My  acquaintance  with  the  pleasant  creature,  whose  loss  we  all 
deplore,  was  but  slight. 

My  first  introduction  to  E.,  which  afterwards  ripened  into  an 
acquaintance  a  little  on  this  side  of  intimacy,  was  over  a  counter 
in  the  Leamington  Spa  Library,  then  newly  entered  upon  by  a 
branch  of  his  family.  E.,  whom  nothing  misbecame — ^to  auspi- 
cate, I  suppose,  the  filial  concern,  and  set  it  a-going  with  a  lustre 
— was  serving  in  person  two  damsels  fair,  who  had  come  into  the 
shop  ostensibly  to  inquire  for  some  new  publication,  but  in  reality 
to  have  a  sight  of  the  illustrious  shopman,  hoping  some  confer- 
ence. With  what  an  air  did  he  reach  down  the  volume,  dispas- 
sionately giving  his  opinion  of  the  worth  of  the  work  in  question, 
and  launching  out  into  a  dissertation  on  the  comparative  merits 
with  those  of  certain  publications  of  a  similar  stamp,  its  rivals  ! 
his  enchanted  customers  fairly  hanging  on  his  lips,  subdued  to 
their  authoritative  sentence.  So  have  I  seen  a  gentleman  in 
comedy  acting  the  shopman.  So  Lovelace  sold  his  gloves  in 
King  Street.  I  admired  the  histrionic  art,  by  which  he  contrived 
to  carry  clean  away  every  notion  of  disgrace,  from  the  occupa- 
tion he  had  so  generously  submitted  to ;  and  from  that  hour  I 
judged  him,  with  no  after  repentance,  to  be  a  person  with  whom 
it  would  be  a  felicity  to  be  more  acquainted. 

To  descant  upon  his  merits  as  a  Comedian  would  be  superflu- 
ous. With  his  blended  private  and  professional  habits  alone  I 
have  to  do ;  that  harmonious  fusion  of  the  manners  of  the  player 
into  those  of  every-day  life,  which  brought  the  stage  boards  into 
streets,  and  dining-parlors,  and  kept  up  the  play  when  the  play 
was  ended. — "  I  like  Wrench,"  a  friend  was  saying  to  him  one 
day,  "  because  he  is  the  same,  natural,  easy  creature,  on  th^ 


ELLISTONIANA.  29 


stage,  that  he  is  off."  "  My  case  exactly,"  retorted  EUiston — 
with  a  charming  forgetfulness,  that  the  converse  of  a  proposition 
does  not  lead  to  the  same  conclusion — "  I  am  the  same  person  off 
the  stage  that  I  am  071^  The  inference,  at  first  sight,  seems 
identical ;  but  examine  it  a  little,  and  it  confesses  only,  that  the 
one  performer  was  never,  and  the  other  always,  acting. 

And  in  truth  this  was  the  charm  of  Elliston's  private  deport- 
ment. You  had  spirited  performance  always  going  on  before 
your  eyes,  with  nothing  to  pay.  As  where  a  monarch  takes  up 
his  casual  abode  for  a  night,  the  poorest  hovel  which  he  honors  by 
his  sleeping  in  it,  becomes  ipso  facto  for  that  time  a  palace  ;  so 
wherever  Elliston  walked,  sate,  or  stood  still,  there  Was  the  thea- 
tre. He  carried  about  with  him  his  pit,  boxes,  and  galleries,  and 
set  up  his  portable  playhouse  at  corners  of  streets,  and  in  the 
market-places.  Upon  flintiest  pavements  he  trod  the  boards  still ; 
and  if  his  theme  chanced  to  be  passionate,  the  green  baize  carpet 
of  tragedy  spontaneously  rose  beneath  his  feet.  Now  this  was 
hearty,  and  showed  a  love  for  his  art.  So  Apelles  always  paint- 
ed— in  thought.  So  G.  D.  always  poetises.  I  hate  a  lukewarm 
artist.  I  have  known  actors — and  some  of  them  of  Elliston's  own 
stamp — who  shall  have  agreeably  been  amusing  you  in  the  part 
of  a  rake  or  a  coxcomb,  through  the  two  or  three  hours  of  their 
dramatic  existence  ;  but  no  sooner  does  the  curtain  fall  with  its 
leaden  clatter,  but  a  spirit  of  lead  seems  to  seize  on  all  their  facul- 
ties. They  emerge  sour,  morose  persons,  intolerable  to  their 
families,  servants,  &c.  Another  shall  have  been  expanding  your 
heart  with  generous  deeds  and  sentiments,  till  it  even  beats  with 
yearnings  of  universal  sympathy  ;  you  absolutely  long  to  go  home 
and  do  some  good  action.  The  play  seems  tedious,  till  you  can 
get  fairly  out  of  the  house,  and  realize  your  laudable  intentions. 
At  length  the  final  bell  rings,  and  this  cordial  representative  of 
all  that  is  amiable  in  the  human  breast  steps  forth — a  miser.  Ellis- 
ton  was  more  of  a  piece.  Did  he  play  Ranger  ?  and  did  Ranger 
fill  the  general  bosom  of  the  town  with  satisfaction  ?  why  should 
he  not  be  Ranger,  and  diffuse  the  same  cordial  satisfaction  among 
his  private  circles  ?  with  his  temperament,  his  animal  spirits,  his 
good-nature,  his  follies  perchance,  could  he  do  better  than  identify 
himself  with  his  impersonation  ?     Are  we  to  like  a  pleasant  rake 


30  ELIA. 

or  coxcomb,  on  the  stage,  and  give  ourselves  airs  of  aversion  for 
the  identical  character,  presented  to  us  in  actual  life  ?  or  what 
would  the  performer  have  gained  by  divesting  himself  of  the  im- 
personation  ?  Could  the  man  Elliston  have  been  essentially  dif- 
ferent  from  his  part,  even  if  he  had  avoided  to  reflect  to  us  studi- 
ously in  private  circles,  the  airy  briskness,  the  forwardness,  and 
'scape-goat  trickeries  of  his  prototype  ? 

"  But  there  is  something  not  natural  in  this  everlasting  acting  ; 
we  want  the  real  man." 

Are  you  quite  sure  that  it  is  not  the  man  himself,  whom  you 
carmot,  or  will  not  see,  under  some  adventitious  trappings,  which 
nevertheless  sit  not  at  all  inconsistently  upon  him  ?  What  if  it 
is  the  nature  of  some  men  to  be  highly  artificial  ?  The  fault  is 
least  reprehensible  in  'players.  Gibber  was  his  own  Foppington, 
with  almost  as  much  wit  as  Vanburgh  could  add  to  it. 

"  My  conceit  of  his  person," — it  is  Ben  Jonson  speaking  of  Lord 
Bacon, — "  was  never  increased  towards  him  by  his  place  or  honors. 
But  I  have  and  do  reverence  him  for  the  greatness,  that  was  only 
proper  to  himself;  in  that  he  seemed  to  me  ever  one  of  the  great- 
est men,  that  had  been  in  many  ages.  In  his  adversity  I  ever 
prayed  that  Heaven  would  give  him  strength  ;  for  greatness  he 
could  not  want." 

The  quality  here  commended  was  scarcely  less  conspicuous  in 
the  subject  of  these  idle  reminiscences  than  in  my  Lord  Verulam. 
Those  who  have  imagined  that  an  unexpected  elevation  to  the  di- 
rection of  a  great  London  Theatre  affected  the  consequence  of 
Elliston,  or  at  all  changed  his  nature,  knew  not  the  essential 
greatness  of  the  man  whom  they  disparage.  It  was  my  fortune 
to  encounter  him  near  St.  Dunstan's  Church  (which,  with  its 
punctual  giants,  is  now  no  more  than  dust  and  a  shadow),  on  the 
morning  of  his  election  to  that  high  ofUce.  Grasping  my  hand 
with  a  look  of  significance,  he  only  uttered, — "  Have  you  heard 
the  news  ?" — then  with  another  look  following  up  the  blow,  he 
subjoined,  "  I  am  the  future  Manager  of  Drury  Lane  Theatre." 
— Breathless  as  he  saw  me,  he  stayed  not  for  congratulation  or 
reply,  but  mutely  stalked  away  leaving  me  to  chew  upon  his  new- 
blown  dignities  at  leisure.     In  fact,  nothing  could  be  said  to  it. 


ELLISTONIANA.  31 


Expressive  silence  alone  could  muse  his  praise.  This  was  in  his 
great  style. 

But  was  he  less  great  (be  witness,  O  ye  Powers  of  Equanimity, 
that  supported  in  the  ruins  of  Carthage  the  consular  exile,  and 
more  recently  transmuted,  for  a  more  illustrious  exile,  the  barren 
constableship  of  Elba  into  an  image  of  Imperial  France),  when, 
in  melancholy  after-years,  again,  much  near  the  same  spot,  I 
met  him,  when  that  sceptre  had  been  wrested  from  his  hand,  and 
his  dominion  was  curtailed  to  the  petty  managership  and  part 
proprietorship,  of  the  small  Olympic,  Ms  Elba  ?  He  still  played 
nightly  upon  the  boards  of  Drury,  but  in  parts,  alas !  allotted  to 
him,  not  magnificently  distributed  by  him.  Waiving  his  great 
loss  as  nothing,  and  magnificently  sinking  the  sense  of  fallen  ma- 
terial grandeur  in  the  more  liberal  resentment  of  depreciations 
done  to  his  more  lofty  inlellectual  pretensions,  "  Have  you  heard  " 
(his  customary  exordium) — "  have  you  heard,"  said  he,  "  how 
they  treat  me  ?  they  put  me  in  comedy. ^^  Thought  I — but  his 
finger  on  his  lips  forbade  any  verbal  interruption — "  where  could 
they  have  put  you  better  ?"  Then,  after  a  pause — "  Where  I 
formerly  played  Romeo,  I  now  play  Mercutio," — and  so  again  he 
stalked  away,  neither  staying,  nor  caring  for,  responses. 

(),  it  was  a  rich  scene, — but  Sir  A C ,  the  best  of 

story-tellers  and  surgeons,  who  mends  a  lame  narrative  almost  as 
well  as  he  sets  a  fracture,  alone  could  do  justice  to  it, — that  I  was 
a  witness  to,  in  the  tarnished  room  (that  had  once  been  green)  of 
that  same  little  Olympic.  There,  after  his  deposition  from  Impe- 
rial Drury,  he  substituted  a  throne.  That  Olympic  Hill  was  his 
"highest  heaven;"  himself  "Jove  in  his  chair."  There  he  sat 
in  state,  while  before  him,  on  complaint  of  prompter,  was  brought 
for  judgment — how  shall  I  describe  her? — one  of  those  little 
tawdry  things  that  flirt  at  the  tails  of  choruses — a  probationer  for 
the  town,  in  either  of  its  senses — ^the  pertest  little  drab — a  dirty 
fringe  and  appendage  of  the  lamps'  smoke — who,  it  seems,  on 
some  disapprobation  expressed  by  a  "  highly  respectable"  audi- 
ence,— had  precipitately  quitted  her  station  on  the  boards,  and 
withdrawn  her  small  talents  in  disgust. 

"And  how  dare  you,"  said  her  manager, — assuming  a  censorial 
severity,  which  would  have  crushed  the  confidence  of  a  Vestris, 


33  ELIA. 

and  disarmed  that  beautiful  Rebel  herself  of  her  professional 
caprices — I  verily  believe,  he  thought  her  standing  before  him — 
"  how  dare  you,  Madam,  withdraw  yourself  without  a  notice  from 
your  theatrical  duties  ?"  "  I  was  hissed,  Sir."  "  And  you  have 
the  presumption  to  decide  upon  the  taste  of  the  town  ?"  "I  don't 
know  that,  Sir,  but  I  will  never  stand  to  be  hissed,"  was  the  sub- 
joinder  of  young  Confidence — when  gathering  up  his  features 
into  one  significant  mass  of  wonder,  pity,  and  expostulatory  indig- 
nation— ^in  a  lesson  never  to  have  been  lost  upon  a  creature  less 
forward  than  she  who  stood  before  him — his  words  were  these  : 
"  They  have  hissed  me." 

'Twas  the  identical  argument  a  fortiori^  which  the  son  of 
Peleus  uses  to  Lycaon  trembling  under  his  lance,  to  persuade  him 
to  take  his  destiny  with  a  good  grace.  "  I  too  am  mortal."  And 
it  is  to  be  believed  that  in  both  cases  the  rhetoric  missed  of  its 
application,  for  want  of  a  proper  understanding  with  the  faculties 
of  the  respective  recipients. 

"  Quite  an  Opera  pit,"  he  said  to  me,  as  he  was  courteously 
conducting  me  over  the  benches  of  his  Surrey  Theatre,  the  last 
retreat,  and  recess,  of  his  every-day  waning  grandeur. 

Those  who  knew  Elliston,  will  know  the  manner  in  which  he 
pronounced  the  latter  sentence  of  the  few  words  I  am  about  to 
record.  One  proud  day  to  me  he  look  his  roast  mutton  with  us 
in  the  Temple,  to  which  I  had  superadded  a  preliminary  haddock. 
After  a  rather  plentiful  partaking  of  the  meagre  banquet,  not 
unrefreshed  with  the  humbler  sort  of  liquors,  I  made  a  sort  of 
apology  for  the  humility  of  the  fare,  observing  that  for  my  own 
part  I  never  ate  but  one  dish  at  dinner.  "  I  too  never  eat  but  one 
thing  at  dinner," — was  his  reply — ^then  after  a  pause — "  reckon- 
ing fish  as  nothing."  The  manner  was  all.  It  was  as  if  by  one 
peremptory  sentence  he  had  decreed  the  annihilation  of  all  the 
savory  esculents,  which  the  pleasant  and  nutritious-food-giving 
Ocean  pours  forth  upon  poor  humans  .from  her  watery  bosom. 
This  was  greatness,  tempered  with  considerable  tenderness,  to  the 
feelings  of  his  scanty  but  welcoming  entertainer. 

Great  wert  thou  in  thy  life,  Robert  William  Elliston  !  and  not 
lessened  in  thy  death,  if  report  speak  truly,  which  says  that  thou 
didst  direct  that  thy  mortal  remains  should  repose  under  no  in" 


ELLISTONIANA.  33 


scription  but  one  of  pure  Latinity.  Classical  was  thy  bringing 
up !  and  beautiful  was  the  feeling  on  thy  last  bed,  which,  con- 
necting the  man  with  the  boy,  took  thee  back  to  thy  latest  exer- 
cise of  imagination,  to  the  days  when,  undreaming  of  Theatres 
and  Managerships,  thou  wert  a  scholar,  and  an  early  ripe  one, 
under  the  roofs  builded  by  the  munificent  and  pious  Colet.  For 
thee  the  Pauline  Muses  weep.  In  elegies,  that  shall  silence  this 
crude  prose,  they  shall  celebrate  thy  praise. 

PART   II.  4 


34  ELIA. 


THE  OLD  MARGATE  HOY. 


I  AM  fond  of  passing  my  vacations  (I  believe  I  have  said  so 
before)  at  one  or  other  of  the  Universities.  Next  to  these  my 
choice  would  fix  me  at  some  woody  spot,  such  as  the  neighbor- 
hood of  Henley  affords  in  abundance,  on  the  banks  of  my  beloved 
Thames.  But  somehow  or  other  my  cousin  contrives  to  wheedle 
me,  once  in  three  or  four  seasons,  to  a  watering-place.  Old 
attachments  cling  to  her  in  spite  of  experience.  We  have  been 
dull  at  Worthing  one  summer,  duller  at  Brighton  another,  dullest 
at  Eastbourn  a  third,  and  are  at  this  moment  doing  dreary  pen- 
ance at — Hastings ! — and  all  because  we  were  happy  many  years 
ago  for  a  brief  week  at  Margate.  That  was  our  first  sea-side 
experiment,  and  many  circumstances  combined  to  make  it  the 
most  agreeable  holiday  of  my  life.  We  had  neither  of  us  seen 
the  sea,  and  we  had  never  been  from  home  so  long  together  m 
company. 

Can  I  forget  thee,  thou  old  Margate  Hoy,  with  thy  weather- 
beaten,  sun-burnt  captain,  and  his  rough  accommodations — ill  ex- 
changed for  the  foppery  and  fresh-water  niceness  of  the  modern 
steam-packet  ?  To  the  winds  and  waves  thou  committedst  thy 
goodly  freightage,  and  didst  ask  no  aid  of  magic  fumes,  and  spells, 
and  boiling  caldrons.  With  the  gales  of  heaven  thou  wentest 
swimmingly ;  or,  when  it  was  their  pleasure,  stoodest  still  with 
sailor-like  patience.  Thy  course  was  natural,  not  forced,  as  in 
a  hot-bed ;  nor  didst  thou  go  poisoning  the  breath  of  ocean  with 
sulphureous  smoke — a  great  sea  chimera,  chimneying  and  fur- 
nacing  the  deep ;  or  liker  to  that  fire-god  parching  up  Scamander. 

Can  I  forget  thy  honest,  yet  slender  crew,  with  their  coy  re- 
luctant responses  (yet  to  the  suppression  of  anything  like  con- 


THE  OLD  MARGATE  HOY.  35 

tempt)  to  the  raw  questions,  which  we  of  the  great  city  would  be 
ever  and  anon  putting  to  them,  as  to  the  uses  of  this  or  that 
strange  naval  implement?  'Specially  can  I  forget  thee,  thou 
happy  medium,  thou  shade  of  refuge  between  us  and  them,  con- 
ciliating interpreter  of  their  skill  to  our  simplicity,  comfortable 
ambassador  between  sea  and  land ! — whose  sailor-trousers  did  no* 
more  convincingly  assure  thee  to  be  an  adopted  denizen  of  the 
former,  than  thy  white  cap,  and  whiter  apron  over  them,  with  thy 
neat-figured  practice  in  thy  culinary  vocation,  bespoke  thee  to 
have  been  of  inland  nurture  heretofore — a  master  cook  of  East 
cheap  ?  How  busily  didst  thou  ply  thy  multifarious  occupation, 
cook,  mariner,  attendant,  chamberlain  :  here,  there,  like  another 
Ariel,  flaming  at  once  about  all  parts  of  the  deck,  yet  with  kindlier 
ministrations — not  to  assist  the  tempest,  but,  as  if  touched  with  a 
kindred  sense  of  our  infirmities,  to  soothe  the  qualms  which  that 
untried  motion  might  haply  raise  in  our  crude  land-fancies.  And 
when  the  o'er-washing  billows  drove  us  below  deck  (for  it  was 
far  gone  in  October,  and  we  had  stiff  and  blowing  weather),  how 
did  thy  officious  ministerings,  still  catering  for  our  comfort,  with 
cards,  and  cordials,  and  thy  more  cordial  conversation,  alleviate 
the  closeness  and  the  confinement  of  thy  else  (truth  to  say)  not 
very  savory,  nor  very  inviting,  little  cabin  ? 

With  these  additaments  to  boot,  we  had  on  board  a  fellow-passen- 
ger, whose  discourse  in  variety  might  have  beguiled  a  longer  voyage 
than  we  meditated,  and  have  made  mirth  and  wonder  abound  as 
far  as  the  Azores.  He  was  a  dark,  Spanish-complexioned  young 
man,  remarkably  handsome,  with  an  officer-like  assurance,  and 
an  insuppressible  volubility  of  assertion.  He  was,  in  fact,  the 
greatest  liar  I  had  met  with  then,  or  since.  He  was  none  of  your 
hesitating,  half  story-tellers  (a  most  painful  description  of  mortals) 
who  go  on  sounding  your  belief,  and  only  giving  you  as  much  as 
they  see  you  can  swallow  at  a  time — the  nibbling  pickpockets  of 
your  patience — but  one  who  committed  downright,  day-light  depre- 
dations upon  his  neighbor's  faith.  He  did  not  stand  shivering  upon 
the  brink,  but  was  a  hearty,  thorough-paced  liar,  and  plunged  at 
once  into  the  depths  of  your  credulity.  I  partly  believe,  he  made 
pretty  sure  of  his  company.  Not  many  rich,  not  many  wise,  or 
learned,  composed  at  that  time  the  common  stowage  of  a  Margate 


36'  ELIA. 


packet.  We  were,  I  am  afraid,  a  set  of  as  unseasoned  Londoners 
(let  our  enemies  give  it  a  worse  name)  as  Aldermanbury,  or 
Watling-street,  at  that  time  of  day  could  have  supplied.  There 
might  be  an  exception  or  two  among  us,  but  I  scorn  to  make  any 
invidious  distinctions  among  such  a  jolly,  companionable  ship's 
company,  as  those  were  whom  I  sailed  with.  Something  too 
must  be  conceded  to  the  Genius  Loci.  Had  the  confident  fellow 
told  us  half  the  legends  on  land,  which  he  favored  us  with  on  the 
other  element,  I  flatter  myself  the  good  sense  of  most  of  us  would 
have  revolted.  But  we  were  in  a  new  world,  with  everything 
unfamiliar  about  us,  and  the  time  and  place  disposed  us  to  the 
reception  of  any  prodigious  marvel  whatsoever.  Time  has  obli- 
terated from  my  memory  much  of  his  wild  fablings ;  and  the  rest 
would  appear  but  dull,  as  written,  and  to  be  read  on  shore.  He 
had  been  Aide-de-camp  (among  other  rare  accidents,  and  for- 
tunes) to  a  Persian  Prince,  and  at  one  blow  had  stricken  off  the 
head  of  the  King  of  Carimania  on  horseback.  He,  of  course, 
married  the  Prince's  daughter.  I  forget  what  unlucky  turn  in 
the  politics  of  that  court,  combining  with  the  loss  of  his  consort, 
was  the  reason  of  his  quitting  Persia  ;  but,  with  the  rapidity  of  a 
magician,  he  transported  himself,  along  with  his  hearers,  back  to 
England,  where  we  still  found  him  in  the  confidence  of  great  ladies. 
There  was  some  story  of  a  princess — Elizabeth,  if  I  remember — 
having  intrusted  to  his  care  an  extraordinary  casket  of  jewels, 
upon  some  extraordinary  occasion — but,  as  I  am  not  certain  of 
the  name  or  circumstance  at  this  distance  of  time,  I  must  leave  it 
to  the  Royal  daughters  of  England  to  settle  the  honor  among 
themselves  in  private.  I  cannot  call  to  mind  half  of  his  pleasant 
wonders ;  but  I  perfectly  remember,  that  in  the  course  of  his 
travels  he  had  seen  a  phoenix  ;  and  he  obligingly  undeceived  us 
of  the  vulgar  error,  that  there  is  but  one  of  that  species  at  a  time, 
assuring  us  that  they  were  not  uncommon  in  some  parts  of 
Upper  Egypt.  Hitherto  he  had  found  the  most  implicit  listeners. 
His  dreaming  fancies  had  transported  us  beyond  the  "  ignorant 
present."  But  when  (still  hardying  more  and  more  in  his  tri- 
umphs over  our  simplicity)  he  went  on  to  affirm  that  he  had 
actually  sailed  through  the  legs  of  the  Colossus  at  Rhodes,  it 
really  became  necessary  to  make  a  stand.     And  here  I  must  do 


THE  OLD  MARGATE  HOY.  37 

justice  to  the  good  sense  and  intrepidity  of  one  of  our  party,  a 
youth,  that  had  hitherto  been  one  of  his  most  deferential  auditors, 
who,  from  his  recent  reading,  made  bold  to  assure  the  gentleman, 
that  there  must  be  some  mistake,  as  "  the  Colossus  in  question 
had  been  destroye'd  long  since;"  to  whose  opinion,  delivered  with 
all  modesty,  our  hero  was  obliging  enough  to  concede  thus  much, 
that  "  the  figure  was  indeed  a  little  damaged."  This  was  the 
only  opposition  he  met  with,  and  it  did  not  at  all  seem  to  stagger 
him,  for  he  proceeded  with  his  fables,  which  the  same  youth  appear- 
ed to  swallow  with  still  more  complacency  than  ever, — confirmed, 
as  it  were,  by  the  extreme  candor  of  that  concession.  With  these 
prodigies  he  wheedled  us  on  till  we  came  in  sight  of  the  Reculvers, 
which  one  of  our  own  company  (having  been  the  voyage  before) 
immediately  recognizing,  and  pointing  out  to  us,  was  considered 
by  us  as  no  ordinary  seaman. 

All  this  time  sat  upon  the  edge  of  the  deck  quite  a  different 
character.  It  was  a  lad,  apparently  very  poor,  very  infirm,  and 
very  patient.  His  eye  was  ever  on  the  sea,  with  a  smile ;  and, 
if  he  caught  now  and  then  some  snatches  of  these  wild  legends, 
it  was  by  accident,  and  they  seemed  not  to  concern  him.  The 
waves  to  him  whispered  more  pleasant  stories.  He  was  as  one, 
being  with  us,  but  not  of  us.  He  heard  the  bell  of  dinner  ring 
without  stirring ;  and  when  some  of  us  pulled  out  our  private 
stores — our  cold  meat  and  our  salads — he  produced  none,  and 
seemed  to  want  none.  Only  a  solitary  biscuit  he  had  laid  in ; 
provision  for  the  one  or  two  days  and  nights,  to  which  these  ves- 
sels then  were  oftentimes  obliged  to  prolong  their  voyage.  Upon 
a  nearer  acquaintance  with  him,  which  he  seemed  neither  to  court 
nor  decline,  we  learned  that  he  was  going  to  Margate,  with  the 
hope  of  being  admitted  into  the  Infirmary  there  for  sea-bathing. 
His  disease  was  a  scrofula,  which  appeared  to  have  eaten  all  over 
him.  He  expressed  great  hope  of  a  cure  ;  and  when  we  asked 
him,  whether  he  had  any  friends  whera  he  was  going,  he  replied, 
"  he  had  no  friends." 

These  pleasant,  and  some  mournful  passages,  with  the  first  sight 
of  the  sea,  co-operating  with  youth,  and  a  sense  of  holidays,  and 
out-of-door  adventure,  to  me  that  had  been  pent  up  in  populous 
cities  for  many  months  before, — have  left  upon  my  mind  the  fra- 


38  ELTA. 


grance  as  of  summer  days  gone  by,  bequeathing  nothing  but  their 
remembrance  for  cold  and  wintry  hours  to  chew  upon. 

Will  it  be  thought  a  digression  (it  may  spare  some  unwelcome 
comparisons),  if  I  endeavor  to  account  for  the  dissatisfaction  which 
I  have  heard  so  many  persons  confess  to  have  felt  (as  I  did  my- 
self feel  in  part  on  this  occasion),  at  the  sight  of  the  sea  for  the  first 
time  ?  I  think  the  reason  usually  given — referring  to  the  inca- 
pacity of  actual  objects  for  satisfying  our  preconceptions  of  them — 
scarcely  goes  deep  enough  into  the  question.  Let  the  same  per- 
son see  a  lion,  an  elephant,  a  mountain,  for  the  first  time  in  his 
life,  and  he  shall  perhaps  feel  himself  a  little  mortified.  The 
things  do  not  fill  up  that  space,  which  the  idea  of  them  seemed  to 
take  up  in  his  mind.  But  they  have  still  a  correspondency  to  his 
first  notion,  and  in  time  grow  up  to  it,  so  as  to  produce  a  very 
similar  impression  :  enlarging  themselves  (if  I  may  say  so)  upon 
familiarity.  But  the  sea  remains  a  disappointment. — Is  it  not,  that 
in  the  latter  we  had  expected  to  behold  (absurdly,  I  grant,  but  I 
am  afraid,  by  the  law  of  imagination,  unavoidably)  not  a  definite 
object,  as  those  wild  beasts,  or  that  mountain  compassable  by  the 
eye,  but  all  the  sea  at  once,  the  commensurate  antagonist  of 
THE  EARTH  ?  I  do  uot  Say  wc  tell  ourselves  so  much,  but  the 
craving  of  the  mind  is  to  be  satisfied  with  nothing  less.  I  will 
suppose  the  case  of  a  young  person  of  fifteen  (as  T  then  was) 
knowing  nothing  of  the  sea,  but  from  description.  He  comes  to 
it  for  the  first  time — all  that  he  has  been  reading  of  it  all  his  life, 
and  that  the  most  enthusiastic  part  of  life, — all  he  has  gathered 
from  narratives  of  wandering  seamen, — what  he  has  gained  from 
true  voyages,  and  what  he  cherishes  as  credulously  from  romance 
and  poetry, — crowding  their  images,  and  exacting  strange  tributes 
from  expectation. — He  thinks  of  the  great  deep,  and  of  those  who 
go  down  unto  it ;  of  its  thousand  isles,  and  of  the  vast  continents 
it  washes  ;  of  its  receiving  the  mighty  Plate,  or  Orellana,  into  its 
bosom,  without  disturbance,  or  sense  of  augmentation  ;  of  Biscay 
swells,  and  the  mariner 

For  many  a  day,  and  many  a  dreadful  night, 
Incessant  laboring  round  the  stormy  Cape  ; 

of  fatal  rocks,  and  the  "  still- vexed  Bermocthes;"  of  great  whirl- 


THE  OLD  MARGATE  HOY.  39 

pools,  and  the  waterspout ;  of  sunken  ships,  and  sumless  treasures 
swallowed  up  in  the  unrestoring  depths ;  of  fishes  and  quaint 
monsters,  to  which  all  that  is  terrible  on  earth — 

Be  but  as  buggs  to  frighten  babes  withal, 
Compared  with  the  creatures  in  the  sea's  entral ; 

of  naked  savages,  and  Juar  Fernandez ;  of  pearls,  and  shells ; 
of  coral  beds,  and  of  enchanted  isles ;  of  mermaids'  grots — 

I  do  not  assert  that  in  sober  earnest  he  expects  to  be  shown  all 
these  wonders  at  once,  but  he  is  under  the  tyranny  of  a  mighty 
faculty,  which  haunts  him  with  confused  hints  and  shadows  of  all 
these ;  and  when  the  actual  object  opens  first  upon  him,  seen  (in 
tame  weather,  too,  most  likely)  from  our  unromantic  coasts — a 
speck,  a  slip  of  sea- water,  as  it  shows  to  him — what  can  it  prove 
but  a  very  unsatisfying  and  even  diminutive  entertainment !  Or 
if  he  has  come  to  it  from  the  mouth  of  a  river,  was  it  much  more 
than  the  river  widening  ?  and,  even  out  of  sight  of  land,  what 
had  he  but  a  flat  watery  horizon  about  him,  nothing  comparable 
to  the  vast  o'er-curtaining  sky,  his  familiar  object,  seen  daily  with- 
out dread  or  amazement  ? — Who,  in  similar  circumstances,  has 
not  been  tempted  to  exclaim  with  Charoba,  in  the  poem  of  Gebir, 

Is  this  the  mighty  ocean  ?  is  this  all  ? 

1  love  town,  or  country ;  but  this  detestable  Cinque  Port  is 
neither.  I  hate  these  scrubbed  shoots,  thrusting  out  their  starved 
foliage  from  between  the  horrid  fissures  of  dusty  innutritions 
rocks ;  which  the  amateur  calls  "  verdure  to  the  edge  of  the  sea." 
I  require  woods,  and  they  show  me  stunted  coppices.  I  cry  out 
for  the  water  brooks,  and  pant  for  fresh  streams,  and  inland  mur- 
murs. I  cannot  stand  all  day  on  the  naked  beach,  watching  the 
capricious  hues  of  the  sea,  shifting  like  the  colors  of  a  dying 
mullet.  I  am  tired  of  looking  out  at  the  windows  of  this  island- 
prison.  I  would  fain  retire  into  the  interior  of  my  cage.  While 
I  gaze  upon  the  sea,  I  want  to  be  on  it,  over  it,  across  it.  It  binds 
me  in  with  chains,  as  of  iron.  Mj*  thoughts  are  abroad.  I  should 
not  so  feel  in  Staffordshire.  There  is  no  home  for  me  here. 
There  is  no  sense  of  home  at  Hastings.     It  is  a  place  of  fugitive 


40  ELM. 

resort,  an  heterogeneous  assemblage  of  sea-mews  and  stock- 
brokers, Amphitrites  of  the  town,  and  misses  that  coquet  with  the 
Ocean.  If  it  were  what  it  was  in  its  primitive  shape,  and  what 
it  ought  to  have  remained,  a  fair,  honest  fishing-town,  and  no  more, 
it  were  something — with  a  few  straggling  fishermen's  huts  scat- 
tered about,  artless  as  its  cliffs,  and  with  their  materials  filched 
from  them,  it  were  something.  I  could  abide  to  dwell  with  Me- 
schek ;  to  assort  with  fisher-swains,  and  smugglers.  There  are,  oi 
I  dream  there  are,  many  of  this  latter  occupation  here.  Their 
faces  become  the  place.  I  like  a  smuggler.  He  is  the  only  honest 
thief.  He  robs  nothing  but  the  revenue — an  abstraction  I  nevei 
greatly  cared  about.  I  could  go  out  with  them  in  their  mackerel 
boats,  or  about  their  less  ostensible  business,  with  some  satisfac- 
tion. I  can  even  tolerate  those  poor  victims  to  monotony,  who 
from  day  to  day  pace  along  the  beach,  in  endless  progress  and  re- 
currence, to  watch  their  illicit  countrymen — townsfolk  or  brethren 
perchance — whistling  to  the  sheathing  and  unsheathing  of  their 
cutlasses  (their  only  solace),  who,  under  the  mild  name  of  pre- 
ventive service,  keep  up  a  legitimated  civil  warfare  in  the  deplor- 
able absence  of  a  foreign  one,  to  show  their  detestation  of  run 
hoUands,  and  zeal  for  Old  England.  But  it  is  the  visitants  from 
town,  that  come  here  to  say  that  they  have  been  here,  with  no 
more  relish  of  the  sea  than  a  pond-perch  or  a  dace  might  be  sup- 
posed to  have,  that  are  my  aversion.  I  feel  like  a  foolish  dace  in 
these  regions,  and  have  as  little  toleration  for  myself  here,  as  for 
them.  What  can  they  want  here  ?  if  they  had  a  true  relish  of 
the  ocean,  why  have  they  brought  all  this  land  luggage  with  them  ? 
or  why  pitch  their  civilized  tents  in  the  desert  ?  What  mean  these 
scanty  book-rooms — marine  libraries  as  they  entitle  them — if  the 
sea  were,  as  they  would  have  us  believe,  a  book  "  to  read  strange 
matter  in  ?"  what  are  their  foolish  concert-rooms,  if  they  come,  as 
they  would  fain  be  thought  to  do,"  to  listen  to  the  music  of  the 
waves  ?  All  is  false  and  hoUow  pretension.  They  come,  because 
it  is  the  fashion,  and  to  spoil  the  nature  of  the  place.  They  are, 
mostly,  as  I  have  said,  stock-brokers;  but  I  have  watched  the 
better  sort  of  them — now  and  then  an  honest  citizen  (of  the  old 
stamp),  in  the  simplicity  of  his  heart,  shall  bring  down  his  wife 
and  daughters,  to  taste  the  sea  breezes.     I  always  know  the  date 


THE  OLD  MARGATE  HOY.  41 

of  their  arrival.  It  is  easy  to  see  it  in  their  countenances.  A  day 
or  two  they  go  wandering  on  the  shingles,  picking  up  cockle-shells, 
and  thinking  them  great  things ;  but,  in  a  poor  week,  imagination 
slackens :  they  begin  to  discover  that  cockles  produce  no  pearls, 
and  then — O  then ! — if  I  could  interpret  for  the  pretty  creatures 
(I  know  they  have  not  the  courage  to  confess  it  themselves),  how 
gladly  would  they  exchange  their  sea-side  rambles  for  a  Sunday 
walk  on  the  green-sward  of  their  accustomed  Twickenham 
meadows ! 

I  would  ask  of  one  of  these  sea-charmed  emigrants,  who  think 
they  truly  love  the  sea,  with  its  wild  usages,  what  would  their 
feelings  be,  if  some  of  the  unsophisticated  aborigines  of  this  place, 
encouraged  by  their  courteous  questionings  here,  should  venture, 
on  the  faith  of  such  assured  sympathy  between  them,  to  return 
the  visit,  and  come  up  to  see — London.  I  must  imagine  them 
with  their  fishing-tackle  on  their  back,  as  we  carry  our  town 
necessaries.  What  a  sensation  would  it  cause  in  Lothbury? 
What  vehement  laughter  would  it  not  excite  among 

The  daughters  of  Cheapside,  and  wives  of  Lombard-street ! 

I  am  sure  that  no  town-bred  or  inland-born  subjects  can  feel 
their  true  and  natural  nourishment  at  these  sea-places.  Nature, 
where  she  does  not  mean  us  for  mariners  and  vagabonds,  bids  us 
stay  at  home.  The  salt  foam  seems  to  nourish  a  spleen.  I  am 
not  half  so  good-natured  as  by  the  milder  waters  of  my  natural 
river.  I  would  exchange  these  sea-gulls  for  swans,  and  scud  a 
Bwallow  for  ever  about  the  banks  of  Thamesis. 


4S  ELI  A. 


THE  CONVALESCENT. 


A  PRETTY  seyere  fit  of  indisposition  whieh,  under  the  name  of  a 
nervous  fever,  has  made  a  prisoner  of  me  for  some  weeks  past, 
and  is  but  slowly  leaving  me,  has  reduced  me  to  an  incapacity  of 
reflecting  upon  any  topic  foreign  to  itself.  Expect  no  healthy 
conclusions  from  me  this  month,  reader ;  1  can  offer  you  only 
sick  men's  dreams. 

And  truly  the  whole  state  of  sickness  is  such ;  for  what  else 
is  it  but  a  magnificent  dream  for  a  man  to  lie  a-bed,  and  draw 
daylight  curtains  about  him  ;  and,  shutting  out  the  sun,  to  induce 
a  total  oblivion  of  all  the  works  which  are  going  on  under  it  ? 
To  become  insensible  to  all  the  operations  of  life,  except  the  beat- 
ings of  one  feeble  pulse  ? 

If  there  be  a  regal  solitude,  it  is  a  sick  bed.  How  the  patient 
lords  it  there ;  what  caprices  he  acts  without  control !  how  king- 
like he  sways  his  pillow — tumbling,  and  tossing,  and  shifting,  and 
lowering,  and  thumping,  and  flatting,  and  moulding  it,  to  the  ever- 
varying  requisitions  of  his  throbbing  temples. 

He  changes  sides  oftener  than  a  politician.  Now  he  lies  full 
length,  then  half-length,  obliquely,  transversely,  head  and  feet 
quite  across  the  bed ;  and  none  accuses  him  of  tergiversation. 
Within  the  four  curtains  he  is  absolute.  They  are  his  Mare 
Clausum. 

How  sickness  enlarges  the  dimensions  of  a  man's  self  to  him- 
self! he  is  his  own  exclusive  object.  Supreme  selfishness  is 
inculcated  upon  him  as  his  only  duty.  'Tis  the  Two  Tables  of 
the  Law  to  him.  He  has  nothing  to  think  of  but  how  to  get 
well.  What  passes  out  of  doors,  or  within  them,  so  he  hear  not 
the  jarring  of  them,  affects  him  not. 


THE  CONVALESCENT.  43 

A  little  while  ago  he  was  greatly  concerned  in  the  event  of  a 
lawsuit,  which  was  to  be  the  making  or  the  marring  of  his  dearest 
friend.  He  was  to  be  seen  trudging  about  upon  this  man's  errand 
to  fifty  quarters  of  the  town  at  once,  jogging  this  witness,  refresh- 
ing that  solicitor.  The  cause  was  to  come  on  yesterday.  He  is 
absolutely  as  indifferent  to  the  decision,  as  if  it  were  a  question 
to  be  tried  at  Pekin.  Peradventure  from  some  whispering,  going 
on  about  the  house,  not  intended  for  his  hearing,  he  picks  up 
enough  to  make  him  understand,  that  things  went  cross-grained  in 
the  Court  yesterday,  and  his  friend  is  ruined.  But  the  word 
"  friend,"  and  the  word  "  ruin,"  disturb  him  no  more  than  so  much 
jargon.     He  is  not  thinking  of  anything  but  how  to  get  better. 

What  a  world  of  foreign  cares  are  merged  in  that  absorbing 
consideration ! 

He  has  put  on  the  strong  armor  of  sickness,  he  is  wrapped  in 
the  callous  hide  of  suffering  ;  he  keeps  his  sympathy,  like  some 
curious  vintage,  under  trusty  lock  and  key,  for  his  own  use  only. 

He  lies  pitying  himself,  honing  and  moaning  to  himself;  he 
yearneth  over  himself;  his  bowels  are  even  melted  within  him, 
to  think  what  he  suffers ;  he  is  not  ashamed  to  weep  over  himself. 

He  is  for  ever  plotting  how  to  do  some  good  to  himself;  study- 
ing little  stratagems  and  artificial  alleviations. 

He  makes  the  most  of  himself;  dividing  himself,  by  an  allow- 
able fiction,  into  as  many  distinct  individuals,  as  he  hath  sore  and 
sorrowing  members.  Sometimes  he  meditates— as  of  a  thing  apart 
from  him — upon  his  poor  aching  head,  and  that  dull  pain  which, 
dozing  or  waking,  lay  in  it  all  the  past  night  like  a  log,  or  palpa- 
ble substance  of  pain,  not  to  be  removed  without  opening  the  very 
skull,  as  it  seemed,  to  take  it  thence.  Or  he  pities  his  long, 
clammy,  attenuated  fingers.  He  compassionates  himself  all  over ; 
and  his  bed  is  a  very  discipline  of  humanity,  and  tender  heart. 

He  is  his  own  sympathizer ;  and  instinctively  feels  that  none 
can  so  well  perform  that  office  for  him.  He  cares  for  few  spec- 
tators to  his  tragedy.  Only  that  punctual  face  of  the  old  nurse 
pleases  him,  that  announces  his  broths  and  his  cordials.  He 
likes  it  because  it  is  so  unmoved,  and  because  he  can  pour  forth 
his  feverish' ejaculations  before  it  as  unreservedly  as  to  his  bed- 
post. 


44  ELIA. 


To  the  world's  Vusiness  he  is  dead.  He  understands  not  what 
the  callings  and  occupations  of  mortals  are ;  only  he  has  a  glim- 
mering conceit  of  some  such  thing,  when  the  doctor  makes  his 
daily  call :  and  even  in  the  lines  on  that  busy  face  he  reads  no 
multiplicity  of  patients,  but  solely  conceives  of  himself  as  the  sick 
man.  To  what  other  uneasy  couch  the  good  man  is  hastening, 
when  he  slips  out  of  his  chamber,  folding  up  his  thin  douceur  so 
carefully,  for  fear  of  rustling — is  no  speculation  which  he  can  at 
present  entertain.  He  thinks  only  of  the  regular  return  of  the 
J  same  phenomenon  at  the  same  hour  to-morrow. 
I  V^^^  Household  rumors  touch  him  not.  Some  faint  murmur,  indi- 
J^J  f  cative  of  life  going  on  within  the  house,  soothes  him,  while  he 
knows  not  distinctly  what  it  is.  He  is  not  to  know  anything,  not 
to  think  of  anything.  Servants  gliding  up  or  down  the  distant 
staircase,  treading  as  upon  velvet,  gently  keep  his  ear  awake,  so 
long  as  he  troubles  not  himself  further  than  with  some  feeble 
guess  at  their  errands.  Exacter  knowledge  would  be  a  burthen 
to  him  :  he  can  just  endure  the  pressure  of  conjecture.  He  opens 
his  eye  faintly  at  the  dull  stroke  of  the  muffled  knocker,  and 
closes  it  again  without  asking  "  Who  was  it  ?"  He  is  flattered 
by  a  general  notion  that  inquiries  are  making  after  him,  but  he 
cares  not  to  know  the  name  of  the  inquirer.  In  the  general  still- 
ness, and  awful  hush  of  the  house,  he  lies  in  state,  and  feels  his 
sovereignty. 

To  be  sick  is  to  enjoy  monarchal  prerogatives.  Compare  the 
silent  tread,  and  quiet  ministry,  almost  by  the  eye  only,  with  which 
he  is  served — with  the  careless  demeanor,  the  unceremonious 
goings  in  and  out  (slapping  of  doors,  or  leaving  them  open)  of  the 
very  same  attendants,  when  he  is  getting  a  little  better — and  you 
will  confess,  that  from  the  bed  of  sickness  (throne  let  me  rather 
call  it)  to  the  elbow-chair  of  convalescence,  is  a  fall  from  dignity, 
amounting  to  a  deposition. 

How  convalescence  shrinks  a  man  back  to  his  pristine  stature  ! 
where  is  now  the  space,  which  he  occupied  so  lately,  in  his  own, 
in  the  family's  eye  ?  T 

The  scene  of  his  regalities,  his  sick  room,  which  was  the  pre- 
sence chamber,  where  he  lay  and  acted  his  despotic  fancies — how 
is  it  reduced  to  a  common  bed-room  ?     The  trimness  of  the  very 


THE  CONVALESCENT.  45 

bed  has  something  petty  and  unmeaning  about  it.  It  is  made 
every  day.  How  unlike  to  that  wavy,  many-furrowed,  oceanic 
surfacej  which  it  presented  so  short  a  time  since,  when  to  make  it 
was  a  service  not  to  be  thought  of  at  oftener  than  three  or  four 
day  revolutions,  when  the  patient  was  with  pain  and  grief  to  be 
lifted  for  a  little  while  out  of  it,  to  submit  to  the  encroachments  of 
unwelcome  neatness,  and  decencies  which  his  shaken  frame 
deprecated ;  then  to  be  lifted  into  it  again,  for  another  three  or 
four  days'  respite,  to  flounder  it  out  of  shape  again,  while  every 
fresh  furrow  was  an  historical  record  of  some  shifting  posture, 
some  uneasy  turning,  some  seeking  for  a  little  ease  ;  and  the 
shrunken  skin  scarce  told  a  truer  story  than  the  crumpled 
coverlid. 

Hushed  are  those  mysterious  sighs — those  groans — so  much 
more  awful,  while  we  knew  not  from  what  caverns  of  vast  hidden 
suffering  they  proceeded.  The  Lernean  pangs  are  quenched. 
The  riddle  of  sickness  is  solved ;  and  Philoctetes  is  become,  an 
ordinary  personage. 

Perhaps  some  relic  of  the  sick  man's  dream  of  greatness 
survives  in  the  still  lingering  visitations  of  the  medical  attendant. 
But  how  is  he,  too,  changed  with  everything  else  !  Can  this  be  he 
— this  man  of  news — of  chat — of  anecdote — of  everything  but 
physic — can  this  be  he,  who  so  lately  came  between  the  patient 
and  his  cruel  enemy,  as  on  solemn  embassy  from  Nature,  erect- 
ing herself  into  a  high  mediating  party  ? — Pshaw  !  'tis  some  old 
woman. 

Farewell  with  him  all  that  made  sickness  pompous — the  spell 
that  hushed  the  household — the  desert-like  stillness,  felt  through- 
out its  inmost  chambers — the  mute  attendance — the  inquiry  by 
looks — the  still  softer  delicacies  of  self-attention — the  sole  and 
single  eye  of  distemper  alonely  fixed  upon  itself — world-thoughts 
excluded — the  man  a  world  unto  himself — his  own  theatre — 

What  a  speck  is  he  dwindled  into ! 

In  this  flat  swamp  of  convalescence,  left  by  the  ebb  of  sickness, 
yet  far  enough  from  the  terra  firma  of  established  health,  your 
note,  dear  Editor,  reached  me,  requesting— ran  article.     In  Arti- 


46  ELIA. 

culo  Mortis,  thought  I ;  but  it  is  something  hard — and  the 
quibble,  wretched  as  it  was,  relieved  me.  The  summons,  unsea- 
sonable as  it  appeared,  seemed  to  link  me  on  again  to  the  petty 
businesses  of  life,  which  I  had  lost  sight  of;  a  gentle  call  to 
activity,  however  trivial ;  a  wholesome  weaning  from  that  pre- 
posterous dream  of  self-absorption— the  puffy  state  of  sickness — 
in  which  I  confess  to  have  lain  so  long,  insensible  to  the  maga- 
zines and  monarchies  of  the  world  alike  ;  to  its  laws,  and  to  its 
literature.  The  hypochondriac  flatus  is  subsiding;  the  acres, 
which  in  imagination  I  had  spread  over — for  the  sick  man  swells 
in  the  sole  contemplation  of  his  single  sufferings,  till  he  becomes  a 
Tityus  to  himself— are  wasting  to  a  span  ;  and  for  the  giant  of 
self-importance,  which  I  was  so  lately,  you  have  me  again  in  my 
natural  pretensions — ^the  lean  and  nieagre  figure  of  your  insignii^ 
ficant  Essayist.  ,  ""^  \y. 


SANITY  OF  TRUE  GENIUS.  47 


SANITY  OF  TRUE  GENIUS 


So  far  from  the  position  holding  true,  that  great  wit  (or  genius,  in 
our  modern  way  of  speaking)  has  a  necessary  alliance  with 
insanity,  the  greatest  wits,  on  the  contrary,  will  ever  be  found  to 
be  the  sanest  writers.  It  is  impossible  for  the  mind  to  conceive 
of  a  mad  Shakspeare.  The  greatness  of  wit,  by  which  the  poetic 
talent  is  here  chiefly  to  be  understood,  manifests  itself  in  the 
admirable  balance  of  all  the  faculties.  Madness  is  the  dispropor- 
tionate straining  or  excess  of  any  one  of  them.  "  So  strong  a 
wit,"  says  Cowley,  speaking  of  a  poetical  friend, 

" did  Nature  to  him  frame. 

As  all  things  but  his  judgment  overcame ; 
His  judgment  like  the  heavenly  moon  did  show. 
Tempering  that  mighty  sea  below.'* 

The  ground  of  the  mistake  is,  that  men,  finding  in  the  raptures 
of  the  higher  poetry  a  condition  of  exaltation,  to  which  they  have 
no  parallel  in  their  own  experience,  besides  the  spurious  resem- 
blance of  it  in  dreams  and  fevers,  impute  a  state  of  dreaminess 
and  fever  to  the  poet.  But  the  true  poet  dreams  being  awake. 
He  is  not  possessed  by  his  subject,  but  has  dominion  over  it.  In 
the  groves  of  Eden  he  walks  familiarly  as  in  his  native  paths. 
He  ascends  the  empyrean  heaven,  and  is  not  intoxicated.  He 
treads  the  burning  marl  without  dismay  ;  he  wings  his  flight  with- 
out self-loss  through  realms  of  chaos  "  and  old  night."  Or  if, 
abandoning  himself  to  that  severer  chaos  of  a  "  human  mind 
untuned,"  he  is  content  awhile  to  be  mad  with  Lear,  or  to  hate 
mankind  (a  sort  of  madness)  with  Timon,  neither  is  that  madness, 
nor  this  misanthropy,  so  unchecked,  but  that, — ^never  letting  the 


48  ELIA. 

reins  of  reason  wholly  go,  while  most  he  seems  to  do  so, — he  has 
his  better  genius  still  whispering  at  his  ear,  with  the  good  servant 
Kent  suggesting  saner  counsels,  or  with  the  honest  steward 
Flavins  recommending  kindlier  resolutions.  Where  he  seems 
most  to  recede  from  humanity,  he  will  be  found  the  truest  to  it. 
From  beyond  the  scope  of  Nature  if  he  summon  possible  exist- 
ences, he  subjugates  them  to  the  law  of  her  consistency.  He  is 
beautifully  loyal  to  that  sovereign  directress,  even  when  he 
appears  most  to  betray  and  desert  her.  His  ideal  tribes  submit 
to  policy  ;  his  very  monsters  are  tamed  to  his  hand,  even  as  that 
wild  sea-brood,  shepherded  by  Proteus.  He  tames,  and  he  clothes 
them  with  attributes  of  flesh  and  blood,  till  they  wonder  at  them- 
selves, like  the  Indian  Islanders  forced  to  submit  to  European 
vesture.  Caliban,  the  Witches,  are  as  true  to  the  laws  of  their 
own  nature  (ours  with  a  difference),  as  Othello,  Hamlet,  and  Mac- 
beth. Herein  the  great  and  the  little  wits  are  differenced  ;  that 
if  the  latter  wander  ever  so  little  from  nature  or  actual  existence, 
they  lose  themselves,  and  their  readers.  Their  phantoms  are 
lawless  ;  their  visions  night-mares.  They  do  not  create,  which 
implies  shaping  and  consistency.  Their  imaginations  are  not 
active — for  to  be  active  is  to  call  something  into  act  and  form — 
but  passive,  as  men  in  sick  dreams.  For  the  super-natural,  or 
something  super-added  to  what  we  know  of  nature,  they  give  you 
the  plainly  non-natural.  And  if  this  were  all,  and  that  these 
mental  hallucinations  were  discoverable  only  in  the  treatment  of 
subjects  out  of  nature,  or  transcending  it,  the  judgment  might  with 
some  plea  be  pardoned  if  it  ran  riot,  and  a  little  wantonised  :  but 
even  in  the  describing  of  real  and  every-day  life,  that  which  is 
before  their  eyes,  one  of  these  lesser  wits  shall  more  deviate  from 
nature — show  more  of  that  inconsequence,  which  has  a  natural 
alliance  with  frenzy, — than  a  great  genius  in  his  "  maddest  fits," 
as  Withers  somewhere  calls  them.  We  appeal  to  any  one  that 
is  acquainted  with  the  common  run  of  Lane's  novels, — as  they 
existed  some  twenty  or  thirty  years  back, — those  scanty  intellec- 
tual viands  of  the  whole  female  reading  public,  till  a  happier 
genius  arose,  and  expelled  for  ever  the  innutritious  phantoms, — 
whether  he  has  not  found  his  brain  more  "  betossed,"  his  memory 
more  puzzled,  his  sense  of  when  and  where  more  confounded, 


SANITY  O.-'^  TRUE  GENIUS.  4'9 

among  the  improbable  events,  the  incoherent  incidents,  the  incon- 
sistent characters,  or  no-characters,  of  some  third-rate  love-intrigue 
— where  the  person  shall  be  a  Lord  Glendamour  and  a  Miss 
Rivers,  and  the  scene  only  alternate  between  Bath  and  Bond- 
street — a  more  bewildering  dreaminess  induced  upon  him,  than 
he  has  felt  wandering  over  all  the  fairy  grounds  of  Spenser.  lu 
the  productions  we  refer  to,  nothing  but  names  and  places  is 
familiar  ;  the  persons  are  neither  of  this  world  nor  of  any  other 
conceivable  one  ;  an  endless  string  of  activities  without  purpose, 
of  purposes  destitute  of  motive  : — we  meet  phantoms  in  our  known 
walks  ;  fantasques  only  christened.  In  the  poet  we  have  names 
which  announce  fiction ;  and  we  have  absolutely  no  place  at  all, 
for  the  things  and  persons  of  the  Fairy  Queen  prate  not  of  their 
"  whereabout."  But  in  their  inner  nature,  and  the  law  of  their 
speech  and  actions,  we  are  at  home  and  upon  acquainted  ground. 
The  one  turns  life  into  a  dream  ;  the  other  to  the  wildest  dreams 
gives  the  sobrieties  of  every  day  occurrences.  By  what  subtle 
art  of  tracing  the  mental  processes  it  is  etfected,  we  are  not  philo- 
sophers enough  to  explain,  but  in  that  wonderful  episode  of  the 
cave  of  Mammon,  in  which  the  Money  God  appears  first  in  the 
lowest  form  of  a  miser,  is  then  a  worker  of  metals,  and  becomes 
the  god  of  all  the  treasures  of  the  world  ;  and  has  a  daughter. 
Ambition,  before  whom  all  the  world  kneels  for  favors — with  the 
Hesperian  fruit,  the  waters  of  Tantalus,  with  Pilate  washing  his 
hands  vainly,  but  not  impertinently,  in  the  same  stream — that  we 
should  be  at  one  moment  in  the  cave  of  an  old  hoarder  of  treasures, 
at  the  next  at  the  forge  of  the  Cyclops,  in  a  palace  and  yet  in  hell, 
all  at  once,  with  the  shifting  mutations  of  the  most  rambling 
dream,  and  our  judgment  yet  all  the  time  awake,  and  neither 
able  nor  willing  to  detect  the  fallacy, — is  a  proof  of  that  hidden 
sanity  whicli  still  guides  the  poet  in  the  widest  seeming-aberra- 
tions. 

It  is  not  enough  to  say  that  the  whole  episode  is  a  copy  of  the 
mind's  conceptions  in  sleep ;  it  is,  in  some  sort — but  what  a  copy  ? 
Let  the  most  romantic  of  us,  that  has  been  entertained  all  night 
with  the  spectacle  of  some  wild  and  magnificent  vision,  recombine 
it  in  the  morning,  and  try  it  by  his  waking  judgment.  That  which 
appeared  so  shifting  and  vet  so  colierent,  while  that  faculty  was 

PART  TI,  5 


50  ELI  A. 

passive,  when  it  comes  under  cool  examination  shall  appear  so 
reasonless  and  so  unlinked,  that  we  are  ashamed  to  have  been  so 
deluded  ;  and  to  have  taken,  though  but  in  sleep,  a  monster  for  a 
god.  But  the  transactions  in  this  episode  are  every  whit  as  vio- 
lent as  in  the  most  extravagant  dream,  and  yet  the  waking  judg. 
ment  ratifies  them. 


CAPTAIN  JACKSON.  M 


CAPTAIN   JACKSON. 


Among  the  deaths  in  our  obituary  for  this  month,  I  observe  with 
concern,  "  At  his  cottage  on  the  Bath  road,  Captain  Jackson." 
The  name  and  attribution  are  common  enough ;  but  a  feeling  like 
reproach  persuades  me,  that  this  could  have  been  no  other  in  fact 
than  my  dear  old  friend,  who  some  five-and-twenty  years  ago 
rented  a  tenement,  which  he  was  pleased  to  dignify  with  the 
appellation  here  used,  about  a  mile  from  West  bourn  Green. 
Alack,  how  good  men,  and  the  good  turns  they  do,  slide  out  of 
memory,  and  are  recalled  but  by  the  surprise  of  some  such  sad 
memento  as  that  which  now  lies  before  us ! 

He  whom  I  mean  was  a  retired  half-pay  officer,  with  a  wife 
and  two  grown-up  daughters,  whom  he  maintained  with  the  port 
and  notions  of  gentlewomen  upon  that  slender  professional  allow- 
ance.    Comely  girls  they  were  too. 

And  was  I  in  danger  of  forgetting  this  man  ? — his  cheerful  sup- 
pers— the  noble  tone  of  hospitality,  when  first  you  set  your  foot 
in  the  cottage — the  anxious  ministerings  about  you,  where  little  or 
nothing  (God  knows)  was  to  be  ministered. — Althea's  horn  in  a 
poor  platter — the  power  of  self-enchantment,  by  which,  in  his 
magnificent  wishes  to  entertain  you,  he  multiplied  his  means  to 
bounties. 

You  saw  with  your  bodily  eyes  indeed  what  seemed  a  bare 
scrag — cold  savings  from  the  foregone  meal — remnant  hardly  suf- 
ficient to  send  a  mendicant  from  the  door  contented.  But  in  the 
copious  will — the  revelling  imagination  of  your  host — ^the  "  mind, 
the  mind,  Master  Shallow,"  whole  beeves  were  spread  before  you 
— hecatombs — no  end  appeared  to  the  profusion. 

It  was  the  widow's  cruse — the  loaves  and  fishes ;  carving  could 


62  ELIA. 

not  lessen,  nor  helping  diminish  it — ^the  stamina  were  left — ^the 
elemental  bone  still  flourished,  divested  of  its  accidents. 

"  Let  us  live  while  we  can,"  methinks  I  hear  the  open-handed 
creature  exclaim ;  "  while  we  have,  let  us  not  want,"  "  here  is 
plenty  left;"  "want  for  nothing" — with  many  more  such  hos- 
pitable sayings,  the  spurs  of  appetite,  and  old  concomitants  of 
smoking-boards,  and  feast-oppressed  chargers.  Then  sliding  a 
slender  ratio  of  Single  Gloucester  upon  his  wife's  plate,  or  the 
daughters',  he  would  convey  the  remanent  rind  into  his  own,  with 
a  merry  quirk  of  "  the  nearer  the  bone,"  &c.,  and  declaring  that 
he  universally  preferred  the  outside.  For  we  had  our  table  dis- 
tinctions, you  are  to  know,  and  some  of  us  in  a  manner  sate  above 
the  salt.  None  but  his  guest  or  guests  dreamed  of  tasting  luxu- 
ries at  night,  the  fragments  were  vere  hospitibus  sacra.  But  of 
one  thing  or  another  there  was  always  enough,  and  leavings: 
only  he  would  sometimes  finish  the  remainder  crust,  to  show  that 
he  wished  no  savings. 

Wine  we  had  none ;  nor,  except  on  very  rare  occasions,  spirits ; 
but  the  sensation  of  wine  was  there.  Some  thin  kind  of  ale  I 
remember — "  British  beverage,"  he  would  say !  "  Push  about, 
my  boys ;"  "  drink  to  your  sweethearts,  girls."  At  every  meagre 
draught  a  toast  must  ensue,  or  a  song.  All  the  forms  of  good 
liquor  were  there,  with  none  of  the  effects  wanting.  Shut  your 
eyes,  and  you  would  swear  a  capacious  bowl  of  punch  was  foam- 
ing in  the  centre,  with  beams  of  generous  Port  or  Madeira,  radi- 
ating to  it  from  each  of  the  table  corners.  You  got  flustered, 
without  knowing  whence ;  tipsy  upon  words ;  and  reeled  under 
the  potency  of  his  unperforming  Bacchanalian  encouragements. 

We  had  our  songs — "  V/hy,  Soldiers,  why  " — and  the  "  British 
Grenadiers  " — in  which  last  we  were  all  obliged  to  bear  chorus. 
Both  the  daughters  sang.  Their  proficiency  was  a  nightly  theme 
— ^the  masters  he  had  given  them — the  "  no-expense  "  which  he 
spared  to  accomplish  them  in  a  science  "  so  necessary  to  young 
women."  But  then — they  could  not  sing  "without  the  instru- 
ment." 

Sacred,  and,  by  me,  never-to-be-violated,  secrets  of  Poverty  ! 
Should  I  disclose  your  honest  aims  at  grandeur,  your  makeshift 
eflx)rts  of  magnificence  ?     Sleep,  sleep,  with  all  thy  broken  keys, 


4 

CAPTAIN  JACKSON.  3a 

if  one  of  the  bunch  be  extant ;  thrummed  by  a  thousand  ances- 
tral thumbs ;  dear,  cracked  spinnet  of  dearer  Louisa !  Without 
mention  of  mine,  be  dumb,  thou  thin  accompanier  of  her  thinner 
warble  !  A  veil  be  spread  over  the  dear  delighted  face  -of  the 
well-deluded  father,  who  now  haply  listening  to  cherubic  notes, 
scarce  feels  sincerer  pleasure  than  when  she  awakened  thy  time- 
shaken  chords  responsive  to  the  twitterings  of  that  slender  image 
of  a  voice. 

We  were  not  without  our  literary  talk  either.  It  did  not  ex- 
tend far,  but  as  far  as  it  went,  it  was  good.  It  was  bottomed  well ; 
had  good  grounds  to  go  upon.  In  the  cottage  was  a  room,  which 
tradition  authenticated  to  have  been  the  same  in  which  Glover,  in 
his  occasional  retirements,  had  penned  the  greater  part  of  his 
Leonidas.  This  circumstance  was  nightly  quoted,  though  none 
of  the  present  inmates,  that  I  could  discover,  appeared  ever  to 
have  met  with  the  poem  in  question.  But  that  was  no  matter. 
Glover  had  written  there,  and  the  anecdote  was  pressed  into  the 
account  of  the  family  importance.  It  diffused  a  learned  air 
through  the  apartment,  the  little  side  casement  of  which  (the 
poet's  study  window),  opening  upon  a  superb  view  as  far  as  the 
pretty  spire  of  Harrow,  over  domains  and  patrimonial  acres,  not 
a  rood  nor  square  yard  whereof  our  host  could  call  his  own,  yet 
gave  occasion  to  an  immoderate  expansion  of — vanity  shall  I  call 
it  ? — in  his  bosom,  as  he  showed  them  in  a  glowing  summer 
evening.  It  was  all  his,  he  took  it  all  in,  and  communicated  rich 
.  portions  of  it  to  his  guests.  It  was  a  part  of  his  largess,  his  hos- 
pitality ;  it  was  going  over  his  grounds  ;  he  was  lord  for  the  time 
of  showing  them,  and  you  the  implicit  lookers-up  to  his  magnifi- 
cence. 

He  was  a  juggler,  who  threw  mists  before  your  eyes — you 
had  no  time  to  detect  his  fallacies.  He  would  say,  "  Hand  me 
the  silver  sugar  tongs  ;"  and  before  you  could  discover  it  was  a 
single  spoon,  ana  that  plated,  he  would  disturb  and  captivate  your 
imagination  by  a  misnomer  of  "  the  urn"  for  a  tea-kettle  ;  or  by 
calling  a  homely  bench  a  sofa.  Rich  men  direct  you  to  their 
furniture,  poor  ones  divert  you  from  it ;  he  neither  did  one  nor 
the  other,  but  by  simply  assuming  that  everything  was  handsome 
about  him,  you  were  positively  at  a  demur  what  you  did,  or  did 


54  ELIA. 

not  see,  at  the  cottage.  With  nothing  to  live  on,  he  seemed  to 
live  on  everything.  He  had  a  stock  of  wealth  in  his  mind  ;  not 
that  which  is  properly  termed  Content,  for  in  truth  he  was  not  to 
be  contained  at  all,  but  overflowed  all  bounds  by  the  force  of  a 
magnificent  self-delusion. 

Enthusiasm  is  catching ;  and  even  his  wife,  a  sober  native  of 
North  Britain,  who  generally  saw  things  more  as  they  were,  was 
not  proof  against  the  continual  collision  of  his  credulity.  Her 
daughters  were  rational  and  discreet  young  women  ;  in  the  main, 
perhaps,  not  insensible  to  their  true  circumstances.  I  have  seen 
them  assume  a  thoughtful  air  at  times.  But  such  was  the  pre- 
ponderating opulence  of  his  fancy,  that  I  am  persuaded,  not  for 
any  half  hour  together  did  they  ever  look  their  own  prospects 
fairly  in  the  face.  There  was  no  resisting  the  vortex  of  his  tem- 
perament. His  riotous  imagination  conjured  up  handsome  settle- 
ments before  their  eyes,  which  kept  them  up  in  the  eye  of  the 
world  too,  and  seem  at  last  to  have  realized  themselves;  for 
they  both  have  married  since,  I  am  told,  more  than  respectably. 

It  is  long  since,  and  my  memory  waxes  dim  on  some  subjects, 
or  I  should  wish  to  convey  some  notion  of  the  manner  in 
which  the  pleasant  crtature  described  the  circumstances  of  his 
own  wedding-day.  I  faintly  remember  something  of  a  chaise- 
and-four,  in  which  he  mad  e  his  entry  into  Glasgow  on  that  morn- 
ing to  fetch  the  bride  home,  or  carry  her  thither,  I  forget  which. 
It  so  completely  made  out  the  stanza  of  the  old  ballad — 

When  we  came  down  through  Glasgow  town. 

We  were  a  comely  sight  to  see  ; 
My  love  was  clad  in  black  velvet. 

And  I  myself  in  cramasie. 

I  suppose  it  was  the  only  occasion  upon  which  his  own  actual 
splendor  at  all  corresponded  with  the  world's  notions  on  that  sub- 
ject. In  homely  cart,  or  travelling  caravan,  by  whatever  humble 
vehicle  they  chanced  to  be  transported  in  less  prosperous  days, 
the  ride  through  Glasgow  came  back  upon  his  fancy,  not  as  a 
humiliating  contrast,  but  as  a  fair  occasion  for  reverting  to  that 
one  day's  state.     It  seemed  an  "  equipage  etern  "  from  which  no 


CAPTAIN  JACKSON.  55 

power  of  fate  or  fortune,  once  mounted,  had  power  thereafter  to 
dislodge  him. 

There  is  some  merit  in  putting  a  handsome  face  upon  indigent 
circumstances.  To  bully  and  swagger  away  the  sense  of  them 
before  strangers,  may  not  be  always  discommendable.  Tibbs, 
and  Bobadil,  even  when  detected,  have  more  of  our  admiration 
than  contempt.  But  for  a  man  to  put  the  cheat  upon  himself;  to 
play  the  Bobabil  at  home  ;  and,  steeped  in  poverty  up  to  the  lips, 
to  fancy  himself  all  the  while  chin-deep  in  riches,  is  a  strain  of 
constitutional  philosophy,  and  a  mastery  over  fortune,  which  was 
reserved  for  my  old  friend  Captain  Jackson. 


66  ELIA. 


THE   SUPERANNUATED  MAN. 


Sera  tamen  respexit 
Libertas.  Virgil. 

A  Clerk  I  was  in  London  gay. 

O'Keefe. 

If  perad venture,  Reader,  it  has  been  thy  lot  to  waste  the  golden 
years  of  thy  life — thy  shining  youth — in  the  irksome  confinement 
of  an  office  ;  to  have  thy  prison  days  prolonged  through  middle 
age  down  to  decrepitude  and  silver  hairs,  without  hope  of  release 
or  respite  ;  to  have  lived  to  forget  that  there  are  such  things  as 
holidays,  or  to  remember  them  but  as  the  prerogatives  of  child- 
hood ;  then,  and  then  only,  will  you  be  able  to  appreciate  my 
deliverance. 

It  is  now  six-and-thirty  years  since  I  took  my  seat  at  the  desk 
in  Mincing-lane.  Melancholy  was  the  transition  at  fourteen  from 
the  abundant  playtime,  and  the  frequently  intervening  vacations 
of  school-days,  to  the  eight,  nine,  and  sometimes  ten  hours'  a-day 
at  a  counting-house.  But  time  partially  reconciles  us  to  any- 
thing. I  gradually  became  content — doggedly  contented,  as  v/ild 
animals  in  cages. 

It  is  true  I  had  my  Sundays  to  myself;  but  Sundays,  admira- 
ble as  the  institution  of  them  is  for  purposes  of  worship,  are  for 
that  very  reason  the  very  worst  adapted  for  days  of  unbending 
and  recreation.  In  particular,  there  is  a  gloom  for  me  attendant 
upon  a  city  Sunday,  a  weight  in  the  air.  I  miss  the  cheerful 
cries  of  London,  the  music,  and  the  ballad-singers — the  buzz  and 
stirring  murmur  of  the  streets.  Those  eternal  bells  depress  me. 
The  closed  shops  repel  me.     Prints,  pictures,  all  the  glittering 


THE  SUPERANNUATED  MAN.  57 

and  endless  succession  of  knacks  and  gewgaws,  and  ostenta- 
tiously displayed  wares  of  tradesmen,  which  make  a  week-day 
saunter  through  the  less  busy  parts  of  the  metropolis  so  delightful 
— are  shut  out.  No  book-stalls  deliciously  to  idle  over — ^no  busy 
faces  to  recreate  the  idle  man  who  contemplates  them  ever  pass- 
ing by — the  very  face  of  business  a  charm  by  contrast  to  his 
temporary  relaxation  from  it.  Nothing  to  be  seen  but  unhappy 
countenances — or  half-happy  at  best — of  emancipated  'prentices 
and  little  tradesfolks,  with  here  and  there  a  servant  maid  that  has 
got  leave  to  go  out,  who,  slaving  all  the  week,  with  the  habit  has 
lost  almost  the  capacity  of  enjoying  a  free  hour  ;  and  livelily  ex- 
pressing the  hoUowness  of  a  day's  pleasuring.  The  very  stroll- 
ers in  the  fields  on  that  day  look  anything  but  comfortable. 

But  besides  Sundays  I  had  a  day  at  Easter,  and  a  day  at 
Christmas,  witli  a  full  week  in  the  summer  to  go  and  air  myself 
in  my  native  fields  of  Hertfordshire.  This  last  was  a  great 
indulgence ;  and  the  prospect  of  its  recurrence,  I  believe,  alone 
kept  me  up  through  the  year,  and  made  my  durance  tolerable. 
But  when  the  week  came  round,  did  the  glittering  phantom  ot 
the  distance  keep  touch  with  me  ?  or  rather  was  it  not  a  series  of 
seven  uneasy  days,  spent  in  restless  pursuit  of  pleasure,  and  a 
wearisome  anxiety  to  find  out  how  to  make  the  most  of  them  ? 
Where  was  the  quiet,  where  the  promised  rest  ?  Before  I  had  a 
taste  of  it,  it  was  vanished.  I  was  at  the  desk  again,  counting 
upon  the  fifty-one  tedious  weeks  that  must  intervene  before  such 
another  snatch  would  come.  Still  the  prospect  of  its  coming 
threw  something  of  an  illumination  upon  the  darker  side  of  my 
captivity.  Without  it,  as  I  have  said,  I  could  scarcely  have  sus- 
tained my  thraldom. 

Independently  of  the  rigors  of  attendance,  I  have  ever  been 
haunted  with  a  sense  (perhaps  a  mere  caprice)  of  incapacity  for 
business.  This,  during  my  latter  years,  has  increased  to  such  a 
degree,  that  it  was  visible  in  all  the  lines  of  my  countenance. 
My  health  and  my  good  spirits  flagged.  I  had  perpetually  a 
dread  of  some  crisis,  to  which  I  should  be  found  unequal.  Be- 
sides my  daylight  servitude,  I  served  over  again  all  night  in  my 
sleep,  and  would  awake  with  terrors  of  imaginary  false  entries, 
errors  in  my  accounts,  and  the  like.     I  was  fifty  years  of  age, 


53  ELIA. 

and  no  prospect  of  emancipation  presented  itself.  I  had  grown  to 
my  desk,  as  it  were  ;  and  the  wood  had  entered  into  my  soul. 

My  fellows  in  the  office  would  sometimes  rally  me  upon  the 
trouble  legible  in  my  countenance ;  but  I  did  not  know  that  it 
had  raised  the  suspicions  of  any  of  my  employers,  when,  on  the 

5th  of  last  month,  a  day  ever  to  be  remembered  by  me,  L , 

the  junior  partner  in  the  firm,  calling  me  on  one  side,  directly 
taxed  me  with  my  bad  looks,  and  frankly  inquired  the  cause  of 
them.  So  taxed,  I  honestly  made  confession  of  my  infirmity,  and 
added  that  I  was  afraid  I  should  eventually  be  obliged  to  resign 
his  service.  He  spoke  some  words  of  course  to  hearten  me,  and 
there  the  matter  rested.  A  whole  week  I  remained  laboring  un- 
der the  impression  that  I  had  acted  imprudently  in  my  disclosure ; 
that  I  had  foolishly  given  a  handle  against  myself,  and  had  been 
anticipating  my  own  dismissal.  A  week  passed  in  this  manner, 
the  most  anxious  one,  I  verily  believe,  in  my  whole  life,  when  on 
the  evening  of  the  12th  of  April,  just  as  I  was  about  quitting  my 
desk  to  go  home  (it  might  be  about  eight  o'clock)  I  received  an 
awful  summons  to  attend  the  presence  of  the  whole  assembled 
firm  in  the  formidable  back  parlor.  I  thought  now  my  time  is 
surely  come,  I  have  done  for  myself,  I  am  going  to  be  told  that 

they  have  no  longer  occasion  for  me.     L ,  I  could  see,  smiled 

at  the  terror  I  was  in,  which  was  a  little  relief  to  me, — when  to 

my  utter  astonishment  B ,  the  eldest  partner,  began  a  formal 

harangue  to  me  on  the  length  of  my  services,  my  very  meritori- 
ous conduct  during  the  whole  of  the  time  (the  deuce,  thought  I, 
how  did  he  find  out  that  ?  I  protest  I  never  had  the  confidence 
to  think  as  much).  He  went  on  to  descant  on  the  expediency  of 
retiring  at  a  certain  time  of  life  (how  my  heart  panted  !),  and 
asking  me  a  few  questions  as  to  the  amount  of  my  own  property, 
of  which  I  have  a  little,  ended  with  a  proposal,  to  which  his  three 
partners  nodded  a  grave  assent,  that  I  should  accept  from  the 
house,  which  I  had  served  so  well,  a  pension  for  life  to  the  amount 
of  two-thirds  of  my  accustomed  salary — a  magnificent  ofier !  1 
do  not  know  what  I  answered  between  surprise  and  gratitude,  but 
it  was  understood  that  I  accepted  their  proposal,  and  I  was  told 
that  I  was  free  from  that  hour  to  leave  their  service.  I  stam- 
mered  out  a  bow,  and  at  just  ten  minutes  after  eight  I  went  home 


THE  SUPERANNUATED  MAN.  69 

for  ever.  This  noble  benefit — gratitude  forbids  me  to  conceal 
their  names — I  owe  to  the  kindness  of  the  most  munificent  firm  in 
the  world — the  house  of  Boldero,  Merryweather,  Bosanquet,  and 
Lacy. 

Estoperpetua  ! 

For  the  first  day  or  two  I  felt  stunned,  overwhelmed.  I  could 
only  apprehend  my  felicity ;  1  was  too  confused  to  taste  it  sin- 
cerely. I  wandered  about,  thinking  I  was  happy,  and  knowing 
that  I  was  not.  I  was  in  the  condition  of  a  prisoner  in  the  old " 
Bastile,  suddenly  let  loose  after  a  forty  years'  confinement.  I 
could  scarce  trust  myself  with  myself.  It  was  like  passing  out 
of  Time  into  Eternity — for  it  is  a  sort  of  Eternity  for  a  man  to 
have  his  Time  all  to  himself.  It  seemed  to  me  that  I  had  more 
time  on  my  hands  than  I  could  ever  manage.  From  a  poor  man, 
poor  in  Time,  I  was  suddenly  lifted  up  into  a  vast  revenue ;  I 
could  see  no  end  of  my  possessions  ;  I  wanted  some  steward,  or 
judicious  bailiff*,  to  manage  my  estates  in  Time  for  me.  And 
here  let  me  caution  persons  grown  old  in  active  business,  not 
lightly,  nor  without  weighing  their  own  resources,  to  forego  their 
customary  employment  all  at  once,  for  there  may  be  danger  in  it. 
I  feel  it  by  myself,  but  I  know  that  my  resources  are  sufficient ;  and 
now  that  those  first  giddy  raptures  have  subsided,  I  have  a  quiet 
home-feeling  of  the  blessedness  of  my  condition.  I  am  in  no 
hurry.  Having  all  holidays,  I  am  as  though  I  had  none.  If 
Time  hung  heavy  upon  me,  I  could  walk  it  away  ;  but  I  do  not 
walk  all  day  long,  as  I  used  to  do  in  those  old  transient  holidays, 
thirty  miles  a  day,  to  make  the  most  of  them.  If  Time  were 
troublesome,  I  could  read  it  away ;  but  I  do  not  read  in  that  vio- 
lent measure,  with  which,  having  no  time  my  own  but  candle- 
light Time,  I  used  to  weary  out  my  head  and  eyesight  in  by- 
gone winters.  I  walk,  read,  or  scribble  (as  now),  just  when  the 
fit  seizes  me.  I  no  longer  hunt  after  pleasure ;  I  let  it  come  to 
me.     I  am  like  the  man 

that's  born,  and  has  his  years  come  to  him 

In  some  green  desert. 

"  Years !"  you  will  say  ;  "  what  is  this  superannuated  sim 


60  ELI  A. 

pleton  calculating  upon  ?  He  has  already  told  us  that  he  is  past 
fifty." 

I  have  indeed  lived  nominally  fifty  years,  but  deduct  out  of 
them  the  hours  which  I  have  lived  to  other  people,  and  not  to 
myself,  and  you  will  find  me  still  a  young  fellow.  For  that  is 
the  only  true  Time,  which  a  man  can  properly  call  his  own,  that 
which  he  has  all  to  himself;  the  rest,  though  in  some  sense  he 
may  be  said  to  live  it,  is  other  people's  Time,  not  his.  The 
remnant  of  my  poor  days,  long  or  short,  is  at  least  multiplied  for 
me  threefold.  My  ten  next  years,  if  I  stretch  so  far,  will  be  as 
long  as  any  preceding  thirty.     'Tis  a  fair  rule-of-three  sum. 

Among  the  strange  fantasies  which  beset  me  at  the  commence- 
ment of  my  freedom,  and  of  which  all  traces  are  not  yet  gone, 
one  was,  that  a  vast  traict  of  time  had  intervened  since  I  quitted 
the  Counting  House.  I  could  not  conceive  of  it  as  an  affair  of 
yesterday.  The  partners  and  the  clerks  with  whom  I  had  for  so 
many  years,  and  for  so  many  hours  in  each  day  of  the  year, 
been  closely  associated — being  suddenly  removed  from  them — 
they  seemed  as  dead  to  me.  There  is  a  fine  passage,  which 
may  serve  to  illustrate  this  fancy,  in  a  Tragedy  by  Sir  Robert 
Howard,  speaking  of  a  friend's  death  : — 


'Twas  but  just  now  he  went  away ; 

I  have  not  since  had  time  to  shed  a  tear ; 
And  yet  the  distance  does  the  same  appear 
As  if  he  had  been  a  thousand  years  from  me. 
Time  takes  no  measure  in  Eternity. 

To  dissipate  this  awkward  feeling,  I  have  been  fain  to  go 
among  them  once  or  twice  since  ;  to  visit  my  old  desk-fellows — 
my  co-brethren  of  the  quill — that  I  had  left  below  in  the  state 
militant.  Not  all  the  kindness  with  which  they  received  me 
could  quite  restore  to  me  that  pleasant  familiarity,  which  I  had 
heretofore  enjoyed  among  them.  We  cracked  some  of  our  old 
jokes,  but  methought  they  went  off  but  faintly.  My  old  desk  ; 
the  peg  where  I  hung  my  hat,  were  appropriated  to  another.     I 

knew  it  must  be,  but  I  could  not  take  it  kindly.     D 1  take  me, 

if  I  did  not  feel  some  remorse — beast,  if  I  had  not — at  quitting 
my  old  compeers,  the  faithful  partners  of  my  toil  for  six-and- 


THE  SUPERANNUATED  MAN.  61 

thirty  years,  that  smoothed  for  me  with  their  jokes  and  conun- 
drums the  ruggedness  of  my  professional  road.  Had  it  been  so 
rugged  then,  after  all  ?  or  was  I  a  coward  simply  ?  Well,  it  is 
too  late  to  repent ;  and  I  also  know  that  these  suggestions  are  a 
common  fallacy  of  the  mind  on  such  occasions.  But  my  heart 
smote  me.  I  had  violently  broken  the  bands  betwixt  us.  It  was 
at  least  not  courteous.  I  shall  be  some  time  before  I  get  quite 
reconciled  to  the  separation.  Farewell,  old  cronies,  yet  not  for 
long,  for  again  and  again  1  will  come  among  ye,  if  I  shall  have 

your  leave»      Farewell,  Ch ,  dry,  sarcastic,  and  friendly  ! 

Do ,  mild,  slow  to  move,  and  gentlemanly  !     PI ,  officious 

to  do,  and  to  volunteer,  good  services  ! — and  thou,  thou  dreary 
pile,  fit  mansion  for  a  Gresham  or  a  Whittington  of  old,  stately 
house  of  Merchants ;  with  thy  labyrinthine  passages,  and  light- 
excluding,  pent-up  offices,  where  cahdles  for  one-half  the  year 
supplied  the  place  of  the  sun's  light ;  unhealthy  contributor  to 
my  weal,  stern  fosterer  of  my  living,  farewell !  In  thee  remain, 
and  not  in  the  obscure  collection  of  some  wandering  bookseller, 
my  "  works !"  There  let  them  rest,  as  I  do  from  my  labors, 
piled  on  thy  massy  shelves,  more  MSS.  in  folio  than  ever  Aqui- 
nas left,  and  full  as  useful  !     My  mantle  I  bequeath  among  ye. 

A  fortnight  has  passed  since  the  date  of  my  first  communica- 
tion. At  that  period  I  was  approaching  to  tranquillity,  but  had 
not  reached  it.  I  boasted  of  a  calm  indeed,  but  it  was  compara- 
tive only.  Something  of  the  first  flutter  was  left ;  an  unsettling 
sense  of  novelty ;  the  dazzle  to  weak  eyes  of  unaccustomed 
light.  I  missed  my  old  chains,  forsooth,  as  if  they  had  been  some 
necessary  part  of  my  apparel.  I  was  a  poor  Carthusian,  from 
strict  cellular  discipline  suddenly  by  some  revolution  returned 
upon  the  world.  I  am  now  as  if  I  had  never  been  other  than  my 
own  master.  It  is  natural  to  me  to  go  where  I  please,  to  do  what 
I  please.  I  find  myself  at  eleven  o'clock  in  the  day  in  Bond- 
street,  and  it  seems  to  me  that  I  have  been  sauntering  there  at 
that  very  hour  for  years  past.  I  digress  into  Soho,  to  explore  a 
book-stall.  Methinks  I  have  been  thirty  years  a  collector.  There 
is  nothing  strange  nor  new  in  it.  I  find  myself  before  a  fine  pic- 
ture in  the  morning.  Was  it  ever  otherwise  ?  What  is  become 
of  Fish-street  Hill  ?     Where  is  Fenchurch-street  ?     Stones  of  old 


62  ELIA. 

Mincing-lane,  which  I  have  worn  with  my  daily  pilgrimage  for 
six-and-thirty  years,  to  the  footsteps  of  what  toil-worn  clerk  are 
your  everlasting  flints  now  vocal  ?  I  indent  the  gayer  flags  of 
Pall  Mall.  It  is  'Change  time,  and  I  am  strangely  among  the 
Elgin  marbles.  It  was  no  hyperbole  when  I  ventured  to  com- 
pare the  change  in  my  condition  to  a  passing  into  another  world. 
Time  stands  still  in  a  manner  to  me.  I  have  lost  all  distinction 
of  season.  I  do  not  know  the  day  of  the  week  or  of  the  month. 
Each  day  used  to  be  individually  felt  by  me  in  its  reference  to 
the  foreign  post  days ;  in  its  distance  from,  or  propinquity  to,  the 
next  Sunday.  I  had  my  Wednesday  feelings,  my  Saturday 
night's  sensations.  The  genius  of  each  day  was  upon  me  dis- 
tinctly during  the  whole  of  it,  affecting  my  appetite,  spirits, 
&c.  The  phantom  of  the  next  day,  with  the  dreary  five  to  fol- 
low, sate  as  a  load  upon  my  poor  Sabbath  recreations.  What 
charm  has  washed  that  Ethiop  white  ?  What  is  gone  of  Black 
Monday  ?  All  days  are  the  same.  Sunday  itself— that  unfor- 
tunate failure  of  a  holiday,  as  it  too  often  proved,  what  with  my 
sense  of  its  fugitiveness,  and  over-care  to  get  the  greatest  quan- 
tity of  pleasure  out  of  it — is  melted  down  into  a  week  day.  I 
can  spare  to  go  to  church  now,  without  grudging  the  huge  cantle 
which  it  used  to  seem  to  cut  out  of  the  holiday.  I  have  Time 
for  everything.  I  can  visit  a  sick  friend.  I  can  interrupt  the 
man  of  much  occupation  when  he  is  busiest.  I  can  insult  over 
him  with  an  invitation  to  take  a  day's  pleasure  with  me  to  Wind- 
sor this  fine  May-morning.  It  is  Lucretian  pleasure  to  behold 
the  poor  drudges,  whom  I  have  left  behind  in  the  world,  carking 
and  caring ;  like  horses  in  a  mill,  drudging  on  in  the  same  eter- 
nal round — and  what  is  it  all  for  ?  A  man  can  never  have  too 
much  Time  to  himself,  nor  too  little  to  do.  Had  I  a  little  son,  I 
would  christen  him  Nothing-to-do  ;  he  should  do  nothing.  Man, 
I  verily  believe,  is  out  of  his  element  as  long  as  he  is  operative. 
I  am  altogether  for  the  life  contemplative.  Will  no  kindly  earth- 
quake come  and  swallow  up  those  accursed  cotton  mills  ?  Take 
me  that  lumber  of  a  desk  there,  and  bowl  it  down 

As  low  as  to  the  fiends. 
I  ana  nc  longer  *****=«',  clerk  to  the  Firm  of,  &c.     I  am 


f 


THE  SUPERANNUATED  MAN.  63 

Retired  Leisure.  I  am  to  be  met  with  in  trim  gardens.  I  am 
already  come  to  be  known  by  my  vacant  face  and  careless  ges- 
ture, perambulating  at  no  fixed  pace,  nor  with  any  settled  pur- 
pose. I  walk  about ;  not  to  and  from.  They  tell  me,  a  certain 
cum  dignitate  air,  that  has  been  buried  so  long  with  my  other 
good  parts,  has  begun  to  shoot  forth  in  my  person.  I  grow  into 
gentility  perceptibly.  When  I  take  up  a  newspaper,  it  is  to  read 
the  state  of  the  opera.  Opvs  operaium  est.  I  have  done  all 
that  I  came  into  this  world  to  do.  I  have  worked  task-work,  and 
have  the  rest  of  the  day  to  myself. 


64  ELIA. 


THE  GfENTEEl  STYLE  IN  WRITING. 


It  is  an  ordinary  criticism,  that  my  Lord  Shaftesbury,  and  Sir 
William  Temple,  are  models  of  the  genteel  style  in  writing. 
We  should  prefer  saying — of  the  lordly,  and  the  gentlemanly. 
Nothing  can  be  more  unlike,  than  the  inflated  finical  rhapsodies 
of  Shaftesbury  and  the  plain  natural  chit-chat  of  Temple.  The 
man  of  rank  is  discernible  in  both  writers ;  but  in  the  one  it  is 
only  insinuated  gracefully,  in  the  other  it  stands  out  offensively. 
The  peer  seems  to  have  written  with  his  coronet  on,  and  his  Earl's 
mantle  before  him ;  the  commoner  in  his  elbow-chair  and  un- 
dress.— What  can  be  more  pleasant  than  the  way  in  which  the 
retired  statesman  peeps  out  in  his  essays,  penned  by  the  latter  in 
his  delightful  retreat  at  Shene  ?  They  scent  of  Nimeguen,  and 
the  Hague.  Scarce  an  authority  is  quoted  under  an  ambassador. 
Don  Francisco  de  Melo,  a  "  Portugal  Envoy  in  England,"  tells 
him  it  was  frequent  in  his  country  for  men,  spent  with  age  and 
other  decays,  so  as  they  could  not  hope  for  above  a  year  or  two 
of  life,  to  ship  themselves  away  in  a  Brazil  fleet,  and  after  their 
arrival  there  to  go  on  a  great  length,  sometimes  of  twenty  or 
thirty  years,  or  more,  by  the  force  of  that  vigor  they  recovered 
with  that  remove.  "  Whether  such  an  effect  (Temple  beautifully 
adds)  might  grow  from  the  air,  or  the  fruits  of  that  climate,  or 
by  approaching  nearer  the  sun,  which  is  the  fountain  of  light 
and  heat,  when  their  natural  heat  was  so  far  decayed :  or  whe- 
ther the  piecing  out  of  an  old  man's  life  were  worth  the  pains ;  I 
cannot  tell :  perhaps  the  play  is  not  worth  the  candle."  Mon- 
sieur Pompone,  "  French  Ambassador  in  his  (Sir  William's)  time 
at  the  Hague,"  certifies  him,  that  in  his  lif9i|^  had  never  heard 
of  any  man  in  France  that  arrived  at  a  hunHred  years  of  age ; 
a  limitation  of  life  which  the  old  gentleman  imputes  to  the  ex 


THE  GENTEEL  STYLE  IN  WRITING.  65 

cellence  of  their  climate,  giving  them  such  a  liveliness  of  temper 
and  humor,  as  disposes  them  to  more  pleasures  of  all  kinds  than 
in  other  countries  ;  and  moralises  upon  the  matter  very  sensibly. 
The  "  late  Robert  Earl  of  Leicester"  furnishes  him  with  a  story 
of  a  Countess  of  Desmond,  married  out  of  England  in  Edward 
the  Fourth's  time,  and  who  lived  far  in  King  James's  reign.  The 
"  same  noble  person  "  gives  him  an  account,  how  such  a  year, 
in  the  same  reign,  there  went  about  the  country  a  set  of  morrice- 
dancers,  composed  of  ten  men  who  danced,  a  Maid  Marian, 
and  a  tabor  and  pipe :  and  how  these  twelve,  one  with  another, 
made  up  twelve  hundred  years.  "  It  was  not  so  much  (says 
Temple)  that  so  many  in  one  small  county  (Hertfordshire)  should 
live  to  that  age,  as  that  they  should  be  in  vigor  and  in  humor  to 
travel  and  to  dance."  Monsieur  Zulichem,  one  of  his  "  col- 
leagues  at  the  Hague,"  informs  him  of  a  cure  for  the  gout; 
which  is  confirmed  by  another  "  Envoy,"  Monsieur  Serinchamps, 
in  that  town,  who  had  tried  it. — Old  Prince  Maurice  of  Nassau 
recommends  to  him  the  use  of  hammocks  in  that  complaint ; 
having  been  allured  to  sleep,  while  suffering  under  it  himself,  by 
the  "  constant  motion  or  swinging  of  those  airy  beds."  Count 
Egmont,  and  the  Rhinegrave  who  "  was  killed  last  summer  be- 
fore Maestricht,"  impart  to  him  their  experiences. 

But  the  rank  of  the  writer  is  never  more  innocently  disclosed 
than  where  he  takes  for  granted  the  compliments  paid  by  foreign- 
ers to  his  fruit-trees.  For  the  taste  and  perfection  of  what  we 
esteem  the  best,  he  can  truly  say,  that  the  French,  who  have, 
eaten  his  peaches  and  grapes  at  Shene  in  no  very  ill  year,  have 
generally  concluded  that  the  last  are  as  good  as  any  they  have 
eaten  in  France  on  this  side  Fontainebleau  ;  and  the  first  as  good 
as  any  they  have  eaten  in  Gascony.  Italians  have  agreed  his  white 
figs  to  be  as  good  as  any  of  that  sort  in  Italy,  which  is  the  earlier 
kind  of  white  fig  there ;  for  in  the  later  kind  and  the  blue,  we 
cannot  come  near  the  warm  climates,  no  more  than  in  the  Fron- 
tignac  or  Muscat  grape.  His  orange-trees,  too,  are  as  large  as 
any  he  saw  when  he  was  young  in  France,  except  those  of  Fon- 
tainebleau ;  or  what  he  has  seen  since  in  the  Low  Countries,  ex- 
cept some  very  old  ones  of  the  Prince  of  Orange's.  Of  grapes 
he  had  the  honor  of  bringing  over  four  sorts  into  England,  which 

PART  II.  6 


66  ELIA. 

he  enumerates,  and  supposes  that  they  are  all  by  this  time  pretty 
common  among  some  gardeners  in  his  neighborhood,  as  well  as 
several  persons  of  quality  ;  for  he  ever  thought  all  things  of  this 
kind  "  the  commoner  they  are  made  the  better."  The  garden 
pedantry  with  which  he  asserts  that  'tis  to  little  purpose  to  plant 
any  of  the  best  fruits,  as  peaches  or  grapes,  hardly,  he  doubts, 
beyond  Northamptonshire  at  the  furthest  northwards ;  and  praises 
the  "  Bishop  of  Munster  at  Cosevelt,"  for  attempting  nothing  be- 
yond cherries  in  that  tjold  climate ;  is  equally  pleasant  and  in 
character.  "  I  may  perhaps"  (he  thus  ends  his  sweet  Garden 
Essay  with  a  passage  worthy  of  Cowley)  "  be  allowed  to  know 
something  of  this  trade,  since  I  have  so  long  allowed  myself  to 
be  good  for  nothing  else,  which  few  men  will  do,  or  enjoy  their 
gardens,  without  often  looking  abroad  to  see  how  other  matters 
play,  what  motions  in  the  state,  and  what  invitations  they  may 
hope  for  into  other  scenes.  For  my  own  part,  as  the  country 
life,  and  this  part  of  it  more  particularly,  were  the  inclination  of 
my  youth  itself,  so  they  are  the  pleasure  of  my  age ;  and  I  can 
truly  say  that,  among  many  great  employments  that  have  fallen 
to  my  share,  I  have  never  asked  or  sought  for  any  of  them,  but 
have  often  endeavored  to  escape  from  them,  into  the  ease  and 
freedom  of  a  private  scene,  where  a  man  may  go  his  own  way 
and  his  own  pace,  in  the  common  paths  and  circles  of  life.  The 
measure  of  choosing  well  is  whether  a  man  likes  what  he  has 
chosen,  which,  I  thank  God,  has  befallen  me ;  and  though  among 
.the  follies  of  my  life,  building  and  planting  have  not  been  the 
least,  and  have  cost  me  more  than  I  have  the  confidence  to  own ; 
yet  they  have  been  fully  recompensed  by  the  sweetness  and  satis- 
faction  of  this  retreat,  where,  since  my  resolution  taken  of  never 
entering  again  into  any  public  employments,  I  have  passed  five 
years  without  ever  once  going  to  town,  though  I  am  almost  in 
sight  of  it,  and  have  a  house  there  always  ready  to  receive  me. 
Nor  has  this  been  any  sort  of  affectation,  as  some  have  thought 
it,  but  a  mere  want  of  desire  or  humor  to  make  so  small  a  re- 
move ;  for  when  I  am  in  this  comer,  I  can  truly  say  with  Horace, 
Me  quoties  reficit,  SfC. 

"  '  Me,  when  the  cold  Digentian  stream  revives. 
What  does  my  friend  believe  I  think  or  ask  ? 


THE  GENTEEL  STYLE  IN  WRITING.  67 

Let  me  yet  less  possess,  so  I  may  live, 
Whate'er  of  life  remains,  unto  myself. 
May  I  have  books  enough  ;  and  one  year's  store, 
Not  to  depend  upon  each  doubtful  hour  : 
This  is  enough  of  mighty  Jove  to  pray. 
Who,  as  be  pleases,  gives  and  takes  away.' " 

The  writings  of  Temple  are,  in  general,  after  this  easy  copy. 
On  one  occasion,  indeed,  his  wit,  which  was  mostly  subordinate 
to  nature  and  tenderness,  has  seduced  him  into  a  string  of  felici- 
tous antitheses  ;  which,  it  is  obvious  to  remark,  have  been  a  model 
to  Addison  and  succeeding  essayists.  "  Who  would  not  be  cove- 
tous, and  with  reason,"  he  says,  "  if  health  could  be  purchased 
with  gold  ?  who  not  ambitious,  if  it  were  at  the  command  of 
power,  or  restored  by  honor  ?  but,  alas !  a  white  staff  will  not 
help  gouty  feet  to  walk  better  than  a  common  cane ;  nor  a  blue 
riband  bind  up  a  wound  so  well  as  a  fillet.  The  glitter  of  gold, 
or  of  diamonds,  will  but  hurt  sore  eyes  instead  of  curing  them  ; 
and  an  aching  head  will  be  no  more  eased  by  wearing  a  crown 
than  a  common  night-cap."  In  a  far  better  style,  and  more  ac- 
cordant with  his  own  humor  of  plainness,  are  the  concluding 
sentences  of  his  "  Discourse  upon  Poetry."  Temple  took  a  part 
in  the  controversy  about  the  ancient  and  the  modern  learning ; 
and,  with  that  partiality  so  natural  and  so  graceful  in  an  old  man, 
whose  state  engagements  had  lefl  him  little  leisure  to  look  into 
modern  productions,  while  his  retirement  gave  him  occasion  to 
look  back  upon  the  classic  studies  of  his  youth — decided  in  favor 
of  the  latter.  "  Certain  it  is,"  he  says,  "  that,  whether  the 
fierceness  of  the  Gothic  humors,  or  noise  of  their  perpetual  wars, 
frighted  it  away,  or  that  the  unequal  mixture  of  the  modern  lan- 
guages would  not  bear  it — the  great  heights  and  excellency  both 
of  poetry  and  music  fell  with  the  Roman  learning  and  empire, 
and  have  never  since  recovered  the  admiration  and  applauses  that 
before  attended  them.  Yet,  such  as  they  are  amongst  us,  they 
must  be  confessed  to  be  the  softest  and  the  sweetest,  the  most 
general  and  the  most  innocent  amusements  of  common  time  and 
life.  They  still  find  room  in  the  courts  of  princes,  and  the  cot- 
tages of  shepherds.  They  serve  to  revive  and  animate  the  dead 
calm  of  poor  and  idle  lives,  and  to  allay  or  divert  the  violent 


68  ELIA. 

passions  and  perturbations  of  the  greatest  and  the  busiest  men. 
And  both  these  effects  are  of  equal  use  to  human  life ;  for  the 
mind  of  man  is  like  the  sea,  which  is  neither  agreeable  to  the 
beholder  nor  the  voyager,  in  a  calm  or  in  a  storm,  but  is  so  to 
both  when  a  little  agitated  by  gentle  gales;  and  so  the  mind, 
when  moved  by  soft  and  easy  passions  or  affections.  I  know  very 
well  that  many  who  pretend  to  be  wise  by  the  forms  of  being 
grave,  are  apt  to  despise  both  poetry  and  music,  as  toys  and  trifles 
too  light  for  the  use  or  entertainment  of  serious  men.  But  who- 
ever find  themselves  wholly  insensible  to  their  charms,  would,  I 
think,  do  well  to  keep  their  own  counsel,  for  fear  of  reproach- 
ing  their  own  temper,  and  bringing  the  goodness  of  their 
natures,  if  not  of  their  understandings,  into  question.  While 
this  world  lasts,  I  doubt  not  but  the  pleasure  and  request  of  these 
two  entertainments  will  do  so  too ;  and  happy  those  that  content 
themselves  with  these,  or  any  other  so  easy  and  so  innocent,  and 
do  not  trouble  the  world  or  other  men,  because  they  cannot  be 
quiet  themselves,  though  nobody  hurts  them."  "  When  all  is 
done  (he  concludes),  human  life  is  at  the  greatest  and  the  best 
but  like  a  froward  child,  that  must  be  played  with,  and  humored 
a  little,  to  keep  it  quiet,  till  it  falls  asleep,  and  then  the  care  is 
over." 


BARBARA  S .  69 


BARBARA  S 


On  the  noon  of  the  14th  of  November,  1743  or  4, 1  forget  which  it 

was,  just  as  the  clock  had  struck  one,  Barbara  S ,  with  her 

accustomed  punctuality,  ascended  the  long  rambling  staircase, 
with  awkward  interposed  landing-places,  which  led  to  the  office, 
or  rather  a  sort  of  box  with  a  desk  in  it,  whereat  sat  the  then 
Treasurer  of  (what  few  of  our  readers  may  remember)  the  Old 
Bath  Theatre.  All  over  the  island  it  was  the  custom,  and  re- 
mains so  I  believe  to  this  day,  for  the  players  to  receive  their 
weekly  stipend  on  the  Saturday.  It  was  not  much  that  Barbara 
had  to  claim. 

This  little  maid  had  just  entered  her  eleventh  year ;  but  her 
important  station  at  the  theatre,  as  it  seemed  to  her,  with  the  bene- 
fits which  she  felt  to  accrue  from  her  pious  application  of  her 
small  earnings,  had  given  an  air  of  womanhood  to  her  steps  and 
to  her  behavior.  You  would  have  taken  her  to  have  been  at  least 
five  years  older. 

Till  lately  she  had  merely  been  employed  in  choruses,  or  where 
children  were  wanted  to  fill  up  the  scene.  But  the  manager,  ob- 
serving a  diligence  and  adroitness  in  her  above  her  age,  had  for 
some  few  months  past  intrusted  to  her  the  performance  of  whole 
parts.  You  may  guess  the  self-consequence  of  the  promoted 
Barbara.  She  had  already  drawn  tears  in  young  Arthur ;  had 
rallied  Richard  with  infantine  petulance  in  the  Duke  of  York ; 
and  in  her  turn  had  rebuked  that  petulance  when  she  was  Prince 
of  Wales.  She  would  have  done  the  elder  child  in  Morton's 
pathetic  after-piece  to  the  life ;  but  as  yet  the  "  Children  in  the 
Wood  "  was  not. 

Long  after  this  little  girl  was  grown  an  aged  woman,  I  have 


70  ELIA. 

seen  some  of  these  small  parts,  each  making  two  or  three  pages 
at  most,  copied  out  in  the  rudest  hand  of  the  then  prompter,  who 
doubtless  transcribed  a  little  more  carefully  and  fairly  for  the 
grown-up  tragedy  ladies  of  the  establishment.  But  such  as  they 
were,  blotted  and  scrawled,  as  for  a  child's  use,  she  kept  them 
all ;  and  in  the  zenith  of  her  after  reputation  it  was  a  delightful 
sight  to  behold  them  bound  up  in  costliest  morocco,  each  single — 
each  small  part  making  a  hook — with  fine  clasps,  gilt-splashed, 
&c.  She  had  conscientiously  kept  them  as  they  had  been  de- 
livered to  her ;  not  a  blot  had  been  effaced  or  tampered  with. 
They  were  precious  to  her  for  their  affecting  remembrancings. 
They  were  her  principia,  her  rudiments  ;  the  elementary  atoms  ; 
the  little  steps  by  which  she  pressed  forward  to  perfection. 
"  What,"  she  would  say,  "  could  Indian-rubber,  or  a  pumice-stone 
have  done  for  these  darlings !" 

I  am  in  no  hurry  to  begin  my  story — indeed  I  have  little  or 
none  to  tell — so  I  will  just  mention  an  observation  of  hers  con- 
nected with  that  interesting  time. 

Not  long  before  she  died  I  had  been  discoursing  with  her  on  the 
quantity  of  real  present  emotion  which  a  great  tragic  performer 
experiences  during  acting.  I  ventured  to  think,  that  though  in 
the  first  instance  such  players  must  have  possessed  the  feelings 
which  they  so  powerfully  called  up  in  others,  yet  by  frequent  re- 
petition those  feelings  must  become  deadened  in  great  measure, 
and  the  performer  trust  to  the  memory  of  past  emotion,  rather 
than  express  a  present  one.  She  indignantly  repelled  the  notion, 
that  with  a  truly  great  tragedian  the  operation,  by  which  such 
effects  were  produced  upon  an  audience,  could  ever  degrade  itself 
into  what  was  purely  mechanical.  With  much  delicacy,  avoid- 
ing to  instance  in  her  seZf-experience,  she  told  me,  that  so  long 
ago  as  when  she  used  to  play  the  part  of  the  Little  Son  to  Mrs. 
Porter's  Isabella  (I  think  it  was),  when  that  impressive  actress 
has  been  bending  over  her  in  some  heart-rending  colloquy,  she 
has  felt  real  hot  tears  come  trickling  from  her,  which  (to  use  her 
powerful  expression)  have  perfectly  scalded  her  back. 

I  am  not  quite  sure  that  it  was  Mrs.  Porter  ;  but  it  was-  some 
great  actress  of  that  day.  The  name  is  indifferent ;  but  the  fact 
of  the  scalding  tears  I  most  distinctly  remember. 


BARBARA  S .  71 


I  was  always  fond  of  the  society  of  players,  and  am  not  sure 
that  an  impediment  in  my  speech  (which  certainly  kept  me  out 
of  the  pulpit)  even  more  than  certain  personal  disqualifications, 
which  are  often  got  over  in  that  profession,  did  not  prevent  me  at 
one  time  of  life  from  adopting  it.  I  have  had  the  honor  (I  must 
ever  call  it)  once  to  have  been  admitted  to  the  tea-table  of  Miss 
Kelly.  I  have  played  at  serious  whist  with  Mr.  Liston.  I  have 
chatted  with  ever  good-humored  Mrs.  Charles  Kemble.  I  have 
conversed  as  friend  to  friend  with  her  accomplished  husband.  I 
have  been  indulged  with  a  classical  conference  with  Macready  ; 
and  with  a  sight  of  the  Player-picture  gallery,  at  Mr.  Mathews's, 
when  the  kind  owner,  to  remunerate  me  for  my  love  of  the  old 
actors  (whom  he  loves  so  much),  went  over  it  with  me,  supplying 
to  his  capital  collection,  what  alone  the  artist  could  not  give  them 
— voice ;  and  their  living  motion.  Old  tones,  half- faded,  of  Dodd, 
and  Parsons,  and  Baddeley,  have  lived  again  for  me  at  his  bid- 
ding. Only  Edwin  he  could  not  restore  to  me.  I  have  supped 
with ;  but  I  am  growing  a  coxcomb. 

As  I  was  about  to  say — ^at  the  desk  of  the  then  treasurer  of  the 
old  Bath  theatre — not  Diamond's — presented  herself  the  little  Bar- 
bara S . 

The  parents  of  Barbara  had  been  in  reputable  circumstances. 
The  father  had  practised,  I  believe,  as  an  apothecary  in  the  town. 
But  his  practice,  from  causes  which  I  feel  my  own  infirmity  too 
sensibly  that  way  to  arraign — or  perhaps  from  that  pure  infelicity 
which  accompanies  some  people  in  their  walk  through  life,  and 
which  it  is  impossible  to  lay  at  the  door  of  imprudence — was  now 
reduced  to  nothing.  They  were  in  fact  in  the  very  teeth  of 
starvation,  when  the  manager,  who  knew  and  respected  them  in 
better  days,  took  the  little  Barbara  into  his  company. 

At  the  period  I  commenced  with,  her  slender  earnings  were  the 
sole  support  of  the  family,  including  two  younger  sisters.  I  must 
throw  a  veil  over  some  mortifying  circumstances. .  Enough  to 
say,  that  her  Saturday's  pittance  was  the  only  chance  of  a  Sun- 
day's (generally  their  only)  meal  of  meat. 

One  thing  I  will  only  mention,  that  in  some  child's  part,  where 
in  her  theatrical  character  she  was  to  sup  off  a  roast  fowl  (O  joy 
to  Barbara  !)  some  comic  actor,  who  was  for  the  night  caterer 


72  ELIA. 

for  this  dainty — in  the  misguided  humor  of  his  part,  threw  over 
the  dish  such  a  quantity  of  salt  (O  grief  and  pain  of  heart  to  Bar- 
bara !)  that  when  she  crammed  a  portion  of  it  into  her  mouth, 
she  was  obliged  sputteringly  to  reject  it ;  and  what  with  shame 
of  her  ill-acted  part,  and  pain  of  real  appetite  at  missing  such  a 
dainty,  her  little  heart  sobbed  almost  to  breaking,  till  a  flood  of 
tears,  which  the  well-fed  spectators  were  totally  unable  to  com- 
prehend, mercifully  relieved  her. 

This  was  the  little,  starved,  meritorious  maid,  who  stood  before 
old  Ravenscroft,  the  treasurer,  for  her  Saturday's  payment. 

Ravenscroft  was  a  man,  I  have  heard  many  old  theatrical  peo- 
ple besides  herself  say,  of  all  men  least  calculated  for  a  treasurer 
He  had  no  head  for  accounts,  paid  away  at  random,  kept  scarce 
any  books,  and  summing  up  at  the  week's  end,  if  he  found  him- 
self a  pound  or  so  deficient,  blest  himself  that  it  was  no  worse. 

Now  Barbara's  weekly  stipend  was  a  bare  half  guinea. — By 
mistake  he  popped  into  her  hand — a  whole  one. 
Barbara  tripped  away. 

She  was  entirely  unconscious  at  first  of  the  mistake  :  God 
knows,  Ravenscroft  would  never  have  discovered  it. 

But  when  she  had  got  down  to  the  first  of  those  uncouth  land- 
ing-places, she  became  sensible  of  an  unusual  weight  of  metal 
pressing  her  little  hand. 
Now  mark  the  dilemma. 

She  was  by  nature  a  good  child.  From  her  parents  and  those 
about  her  she  had  imbibed  no  contrary  influence.  But  then  they 
had  taught  her  nothing.  Poor  men's  smoky  cabins  are  not  always 
porticoes  of  moral  philosophy.  This  little  maid  had  no  instinct 
to  evil,  but  then  she  might  be  said  to  have  no  fixed  principle. 
She  had  heard  honesty  commended,  but  never  dreamed  of  its  ap- 
plication to  herself.  She  thought  of  it  as  something  which  con- 
cerned grown-up  people,  men  and  women.  She  had  never  known 
temptation,  or  thought  of  preparing  resistance  against  it. 

Her  first  impulse  was  to  go  back  to  the  old  treasurer,  and  ex- 
plain to  him  his  blunder.  He  was  already  so  confused  with  age, 
besides  a  natural  want  of  punctuality,  that  she  would  have  had 
some  diflficulty  in  making  him  understand  it.  She  saw  that  in  an 
instant.     And  then  it  was  such  a  bit  of  money  !  and  then  the 


BARBARA  S .  73 


t 


image  of  a  larger  allowance  of  butcher's-meat  on  their  table  next 
day  came  across  her,  till  her  little  eyes  glistened,  and  her  mouth 
moistened.  But  then  Mr.  Ravenscroft  had  always  been  so  good- 
natured,  had  stood  her  friend  behind  the  scenes,  and  even  recom- 
mended her  promotion  to  some  of  her  little  parts.  But  again  the 
old  man  was  reputed  to  be  worth  a  world  of  money.  He  was 
supposed  to  have  fifty  pounds  a  year  clear  of  the  theatre.  And 
then  came  staring  upon  her  the  figures  of  her  little  stockingless 
and  shoeless  sisters.  And  when  she  looked  at  her  own  neat  white 
cotton  stockings,  which  her  situation  at  the  theatre  had  made  it 
indispensable  for  her  mother  to  provide  for  her,  with  hard  strain- 
ing and  pinching  from  the  family  stock,  and  thought  how  glad 
she  should  be  to  cover  their  poor  feet  with  the  same — and  how 
then  they  could  accompany  her  to  rehearsals,  which  they  had 
hitherto  been  precluded  from  doing,  by  reason  of  their  unfashiona- 
ble attire, — in  these  thoughts  she  reached  the  second  landing- 
place — the  second,  I  mean,  from  the  top — for  there  was  still  ano- 
ther left  to  traverse. 

Now  virtue  support  Barbara  ! 

And  that  never-failing  friend  did  step  m — for  at  that  moment  a 
strength  not  her  own,  I  have  heard  her  say,  was  revealed  to  her 
— a  reason  above  reasoning — and  without  her  own  agency,  as  it 
seemed  (for  she  never  felt  her  feet  to  move)  she  found  herself 
transported  back  to  the  individual  desk  she  had  just  quitted,  and 
her  hand  in  the  old  hand  of  Ravenscroft,  who  in  silence  took  back 
the  refunded  treasure,  and  who  had  been  sitting  (good  man)  in- 
sensible to  the  lapse  of  minutes,  which  to  her  were  anxious  ages, 
and  from  that  moment  a  dead  peace  fell  upon  her  heart,  and  she 
knew  the  quality  of  honesty. 

A  year  or  two's  unrepining  application  to  her  profession  bright- 
ened up  the  feet,  and  the  prospects,  of  her  little  sisters,  set  the 
whole  family  upon  their  legs  again,  and  released  her  from  the 
difficulty  of  discussing  moral  dogmas  upon  a  landing-place. 

I  have  heard  her  say,  that  it  was  a  surprise,  not  much  short  of 
mortification  to  her,  to  see  the  coolness  with  which  the  old  man 
pooketed  the  diflerence,  which  had  caused  her  such  mortal  throes. 

Xhis  anecdote  of  herself  I  had  in  the  year  180Q,  from  the  mouth 


74  ELIA. 

of  the  late  Mrs.  Crawford,*  then  sixty-seven  years  of  age  (she 
died  soon  after) ;  and  to  her  struggles  upon  this  childish  occasion 
I  have  sometimes  ventured  to  think  her  indebted  for  that  power  of 
rending  the  heart  in  the  representation  of  conflicting  emotions,  for 
which  in  after  years  she  was  considered  as  little  inferior  (if  at  all 
so  in  the  part  of  Lady  Randolph)  even  to  Mrs.  Siddons. 

*  The  maiden  name  of  this  lady  was  Street,  which  she  changed  by  soe- 
cessive  marriages,  for  those  of  Dancer,  Barry,  and  Crawford.  She  was  Mrs. 
Crawford,  a  third  time  a  widow,  when  I  knew  her. 


THE  TOMBS  IN  THE  ABBEY.  75 


THE  TOMBS  IN  THE  ABBEY 

IN   A    LETTER   TO   R S ,    ESQ. 


Though  in  some  points  of  doctrine,  and  perhaps  of  discipline,  I 
am  diffident  of  lending  a  perfect  assent  to  that  church  which  you 
have  so  worthily  historijied,  yet  may  the  ill  time  never  come  to 
me,  when  with  a  chilled  heart  or  a  portion  of  irreverent  senti- 
ment, I  shall  enter  her  beautiful  and  time-hallowed  Edifices. 
Judge  then  of  my  mortification  when,  after  attending  the  choral 
anthems  of  last  Wednesday  at  Westminster,  and  being  desirous 
of  renewing  my  acquaintance,  after  lapsed  years,  with  the  tombs 
and  antiquities  there,  I  found  myself  excluded ;  turned  out  like  a 
dog,  or  some  profane  person,  into  the  common  street,  with  feel- 
ings not  very  congenial  to  the  place,  or  to  the  solemn  service 
which  I  had  been  listening  to.     It  was  a  jar  after  that  music. 

You  had  your  education  at  Westminster  ;  and  doubtless  among 
those  dim  aisles  and  cloisters,  you  must  have  gathered  much  of 
that  devotional  feeling  in  those  young  years,  on  which  your  purest 
mind  feeds  still — and  may  it  feed  !  The  antiquarian  spirit, 
strong  in  you,  and  gracefully  blending  ever  with  the  religious, 
may  have  been  sown  in  you  among  those  wrecks  of  splendid 
mortality.  You  owe  it  to  the  place  of  your  education  ;  you  owe 
it  to  your  learned  fondness  for  the  architecture  of  your  ancestors; 
you  owe  it  to  the  venerableness  of  your  ecclesiastical  establish- 
ment, which  is  daily  lessened  and  called  in  question  through  these 
practices — ^to  speak  aloud  your  sense  of  them ;  never  to  desist 
raising  your  voice  against  them,  till  they  be  totally  done  away 
with  and  abolished ;  till  the  doors  of  Westminster  Abbey  be  no 
longer  closed  against  the  decent,  though  low-in-purse,  enthusiast, 


•76        ,  ELIA. 

or  blameless  devotee,  who  must  commit  an  injury  against  his 
family  economy,  if  he  would  be  indulged  with  a  bare  admission 
within  its  walls.  You  owe  it  to  the  decencies,  which  you  wish  to 
see  maintained,  in  its  impressive  services,  that  our  Cathedral  be 
no  longer  an  object  of  inspection  to  the  poor  at  those  times  only, 
in  which  they  must  rob  from  their  attendance  on  the  worship 
every  minute  which  they  can  bestow  upon  the  fabric.  In  vain 
the  public  prints  have  taken  up  this  subject,  in  vain  such  poor 
nameless  writers  as  myself  express  their  indignation.  A  word 
from  you.  Sir — a  hint  in  your  Journal — would  be  sufficient  to 
fling  open  the  doors  of  the  Beautiful  Temple  again,  as  we  can  re- 
member them  when  we  were  boys.  At  that  time  of  life,  what 
would  the  imaginative  faculty  (such  as  it  is)  in  both  of  us,  have 
suffered,  if  the  entrance  to  so  much  reflection  had  been  obstructed 
by  the  demand  of  so  much  silver ! — If  we  had  scraped  it  up  to 
gain  an  occasional  admission  (as  we  certainly  should  have  done) 
would  the  sight  of  those  old  tombs  have  been  as  impressive  to  us 
(while  we  have  been  weighing  anxiously  prudence  against  senti- 
ment) as  when  the  gates  stood  open  as  those  of  the  adjacent  Park  ; 
when  we  could  walk  in  at  any  time,  as  the  mood  brought  us,  for  a 
shorter  or  longer  time,  as  that  lasted  ?  Is  the  being  shown  over 
a  place  the  same  as  silently  for  ourselves  detecting  the  genius  of 
it  ?  In  no  part  of  our  beloved  Abbey  now  can  a  person  find 
entrance  (out  of  service  time)  under  the  sum  of  two  shillings. 
The  rich  and  the  great  will  smile  at  the  anticlimax,  presumed  to 
lie  in  these  two  short  words.  But  you  can  tell  them.  Sir,  how 
much  quiet  worth,  how  much  capacity  for  enlarged  feeling,  how 
much  taste  and  genius,  may  coexist,  especially  in  youth,  with  a 
purse  incompetent  to  this  demand. — A  respected  friend  of  ours, 
during  his  late  visit  to  the  metropolis,  presented  himself  for  ad- 
mission to  St.  Paul's.  -  At  the  same  time  a  decently  clothed  man, 
with  as  decent  a  wife,  and  child,  were  bargaining  for  the  same 
indulgence.  The  price  was  only  two-pence  each  person.  The 
poor  but  decent  man  hesitated,  desirous  to  go  in  ;  but  there  were 
three  of  them,  and  he  turned  away  reluctantly.  Perhaps  he 
wished  to  have  seen  the  tomb  of  Nelson.  Perhaps  the  Interior  of 
the  Cathedral  was  his  object.  But  in  the  state  of  his  finances, 
even  sixpence  might  reasonably  seem  too  much.     Tell  the  Aris- 


THE  TOMBS  IN  THE  ABBEY. 


tocracy  of  the  country  (no  man  can  do  it  more  impressively) ; 
instruct  them  of  what  value  these  insignificant  pieces  of  money, 
these  minims  to  their  sight,  may  be  to  their  humbler  brethren. 
Shame  these  Sellers  out  of  the  Temple.  Stifle  not  the  suggestions 
of  your  better  nature  with  the  pretext,  that  an  indiscriminate  ad- 
mission would  expose  the  Tombs  to  violation.  Remember  your 
boy-days.  Did  you  ever  see,  or  hear,  of  a  mob  in  the  Abbey, 
while  it  was  free  to  all  ?  Do  the  rabble  come  there,  or  trouble 
their  heads  about  such  speculations  ?  It  is  all  that  you  can  do  to 
drive  them  into  your  churches;  they  do  not  voluntarily  ofier 
themselves.  They  have,  alas !  no  passion  for  antiquities ;  for 
tomb  of  king  or  prelate,  sage  or  poet.  If  they  had,  they  would 
be  no  longer  the  rabble. 

For  forty  years  that  I  have  known  the  Fabric,  the  only  well- 
attested  charge  of  violation  adduced,  has  been — a  ridiculous  dis- 
memberment committed  upon  the  effigy  of  that  amiable  spy, 
Major  Andre.  And  is  it  for  this — the  wanton  mischief  of  some 
school-boy,  fired  perhaps  with  raw  notions  of  Transatlantic  Free- 
dom— or  the  remote  possibility  of  such  a  mischief  occurring 
again,  so  easily  to  be  prevented  by  stationing  a  constable  within 
the  walls,  if  the  vergers  are  incompetent  to  the  duty — is  it  upon 
such  wretched  pretences,  that  the  people  of  England  are  made  to 
pay  a  new  Peter's  Pence  so  long  abrogated ;  or  must  content 
themselves  with  contemplating  the  ragged  Exterior  of  their  Cathe- 
dral ?  The  mischief  was  done  about  the  time  that  you  were  a 
scholai  ♦h'^re.  Do  you  know  anything  about  the  unfortunate 
relic  ? 


18  ELIA. 


AMICUS   BEDIVIVUS. 


Where  were  ye.  Nymphs,  when  the  remorseless  deep 
Closed  o'er  the  head  of  your  loved  Lycidas  ? 

I  DO  not  know  when  I  have  experienced  a  stranger  sensation,  than 
on  seeing  my  old  friend  G.  D.,  who  had  been  paying  me  a  morn- 
ing  visit  a  few  Sundays  back,  at  my  cottage  at  Islington,  upon 
taking  leave,  instead  of  turning  down  the  right-hand  path  by 
which  he  had  entered — with  staff  in  hand,  and  at  noon-day  deli- 
berately march  right  forwards  into  the  midst  of  the  stream  that 
runs  by  us,  and  totally  disappear. 

A  spectacle  like  this  at  dusk  would  have  been  appalling  enough ; 
but  in  the  broad  open  daylight,  to  witness  such  an  unreserved 
motion  towards  self-destruction  in  a  valued  friend,  took  from  me 
all  power  of  speculation. 

How  I  found  my  feet,  I  know  not.  Consciousness  was  quite 
gone.  Some  spirit,  not  my  own,  whirled  me  to  the  spot.  I  re- 
member nothing  but  the  silvery  apparition  of  a  good  white  head 
emerging ;  nigh  which  a  staff  (the  hand  unseen  that  wielded  it) 
pointed  upwards,  as  feeling  for  the  skies.  In  a  moment  (if  time 
was  in  that  time)  he  was  on  my  shoulders,  and  I — freighted  with  a 
load  more  precious  than  his  who  bore  Anchises. 

And  here  I  cannot  but  do  justice  to  the  officious  zeal  of  sundry 
passers  by,  who,  albeit  arriving  a  little  too  late  to  participate  in 
the  honors  of  the  rescue,  in  philanthropic  shoals  came  thronging 
to  communicate  their  advice  as  to  the  recovery  ;  prescribing  va- 
riously the  application,  or  non-application,  of  salt,  &c.,  to  the 
person  of  the  patient.  Life  meantime  was  ebbing  fast  away, 
amidst  the  stifle  of  conflicting  judgments,  when  one,  more  saga- 
cious than  the  rest,  by  a  bright  thought,  proposed  sending  for  the 


AMICUS  REDIVIVUS. 


Doctor.  Trite  as  the  counsel  was,  and  impossible,  as  one  should 
think,  to  be  missed  on, — shall  I  confess  ? — in  this  emergency  it 
was  to  me  as  if  an  Angel  had  spoken.  Great  previous  exertions 
— and  mine  had  not  been  inconsiderable — are  commonly  followed 
by  a  debility  of  purpose.     This  was  a  moment  of  irresolution. 

MoNOCULUS — for  so,  in  default  of  catching  his  true  name,  I 
choose  to  designate  the  medical  gentleman  who  now  appeared — is 
a  grave,  middle-aged  person,  who,  without  having  studied  at  the 
college,  or  truckled  to  the  pedantry  of  a  diploma,  hath  employed 
a  great  portion  of  his  valuable  time  in  experimental  processes 
upon  the  bodies  of  unfortunate  fellow-creatures,  in  whom  the  vital 
spark,  to  mere  vulgar  thinking,  would  seem  extinct,  and  lost  for 
ever.  He  omitteth  no  occasion  of  obtruding  his  services,  from  a 
case  of  common  surfeit  suffocation  to  the  ignobler  obstructions, 
sometimes  induced  by  a  too  wilful  application  of  the  plant  canna- 
bis outwardly.  But  though  he  declineth  not  altogether  these  drier 
extinctions,  his  occupation  tendeth,  for  the  most  part,  to  water- 
practice  ;  for  the  convenience  of  which,  he  hath  judiciously  fixed 
his  quarters  near  the  grand  repository  of  the  stream  mentioned, 
where  day  and  night,  from  his  little  watch-tower,  at  the  Middle- 
ton's  Head,  he  listeneth  to  detect  the  wrecks  of  drowned  mortality 
— partly,  as  he  saith,  to  be  upon  the  spot — and  partly,  because 
the  liquids  which  he  useth  to  prescribe  to  himself,  and  his  patients, 
on  these  distressing  occasions,  are  ordinarily  more  conveniently  to 
be  found  at  these  common  hostelries  than  in  the  shops  and  phials 
of  the  apothecaries.  His  ear  hath  arrived  to  such  finesse  by 
practice,  that  it  is  reported  he  can  distinguish  a  plunge,  at  a  half 
furlong  distance  ;  and  can  tell  if  it  be  casual  or  deliberate.  He 
weareth  a  medal  suspended  over  a  suit,  originally  of  a  sad  brown, 
but  which,  by  time  and  frequency  of  nightly  divings,  has  been 
dinged  into  a  true  professional  sable.  He  pagseth  by  the  name 
of  Doctor,  and  is  remarkable  for  wanting  his  left  eye.  His  rem- 
edy— after  a  sufficient  application  of  warm  blankets,  friction,  &c., 
is  a  simple  tumbler  or  more,  of  the  purest  Cognac,  with  water, 
made  as  hot  as  the  convalescent  can  bear  it.  Where  he  findeth, 
as  in  the  case  of  my  friend,  a  squeamish  subject,  he  condescend- 
eth  to  be  the  taster ;  and  showeth,  by  his  own  example,  the  in- 
nocuous nature  of  the  prescription.     Nothing  can  be  more  kind 


80  ELIA. 

or  encouraging  than  this  procedure.  It  addeth  confidence  to  the 
patient,  to  see  his  medical  adviser  go  hand  in  hand  with  himself 
in  the  remedy.  When  the  doctor  sM^alloweth  his  own  draught, 
what  peevish  invalid  can  refuse  to  pledge  him  in  the  potion  ?  la 
fine,  MoNocuLUS  is  a  humane,  sensible  man,  who,  for  a  slender 
pittance,  scarce  enough  to  sustain  life,  is  content  to  wear  it  out  in 
the  endeavor  to  save  the  lives  of  others — his  pretensions  so  mode- 
rate, that  with  difficulty  I  could  press  a  crown  upon  him,  for  the 
price  of  restoring  the  existence  of  such  an  invaluable  creature  to 
society  as  G.  D. 

It  was  pleasant  to  observe  the  effect  of  the  subsiding  alarm  up- 
on the  nerves  of  the  dear  absentee.  It  seemed  to  have  given  a 
shake  to  memory,  calling  up  notice  after  notice,  of  all  the  provi- 
dential deliverances  he  had  experienced  in  the  course  of  his  long 
and  innocent  life.  Sitting  up  in  my  couch — my  couch  which 
naked  and  void  of  furniture  hitherto,  for  the  salutary  repose  which 
it  administered,  shall  be  Jionored  with  costly  valance,  at  some 
price,  and  henceforth  be  a  state-bed  at  Colebrook, — he  discoursed 
of  marvellous  escapes — by  carelessness  of  nurses — by  pails  of 
gelid,  and  kettles  of  the  boiling  element,  in  infancy — by  orchard 
pranks,  and  snapping  twigs,  in  schoolboy  frolics — by  descent  of 
tiles  at  Trumpington,  and  of  heavier  tomes  at  Pembroke — by 
studious  watchings,  inducing  frightful  vigilance — by  want,  and 
the  fear  of  want,  and  all  the  sore  throbbings  of  the  learned  head. 
Anon,  he  would  burst  out  into  little  fragments  of  chanting — of 
songs  long  ago — ends  of  deliverance  hymns,  not  remembered  before 
since  childhood,  but  coming  up  now,  when  his  heart  was  made 
tender  as  a  child's — for  the  tremor  cordis,  in  the  retrospect  of  a 
recent  deliverance,  as  in  a  case  of  impending  danger,  acting 
upon  an  innocent  heart,  will  produce  a  self-tenderness,  which  we 
should  do  ill  to  christen  cowardice  ;  and  Shakspeare,  in  the  latter 
crisis,  has  made  his  good  Sir  Hugh  to  remember  the  sitting  by 
Babylon,  and  to  mutter  of  shallow  rivers. 

Waters  of 'Sir  Hugh  Middleton — what  a  spark  you  were  like  to 
have  extinguished  for  ever  !  Your  salubrious  streams  to  this  City, 
for  now  nearly  two  centuries,  would  hardly  have  atoned  for  what 
you  were  in  a  moment  washing  away.  Mockery  of  a  river — 
liquid  artifice — wretched  conduit !  henceforth  rank  with  canals, 


AMICUS  REDIVIVUS.  81* 


and  sluggish  aqueducts.  Was  it  for  this,  that,  smit  in  boyhood 
with  the  exploration  of  that  Abyssinian  traveller,  I  paced  the  vales 
of  Amwell  to  explore  your  tributary  springs^  to  trace  your  salu- 
tary waters  sparkling  through  green  Hertfordshire,  and  cultured 
Enfield  parks  ? — Ye  have  no  swans — no  Naiads — no  river  God — 
or  did  the  benevolent  hoary  aspect  of  my  friend  tempt  ye  to  suck 
him  in,  that  ye  also  might  have  the  tutelary  genius  of  your 
waters  ? 

Had  he  been  drowned  in  Cam,  there  would  have  been  some 
consonancy  in  it ;  but  what  willows  had  ye  to  wave  and  rustle 
over  his  moist  sepulture  ?— or,  having  no  name,  besides  that  un- 
meaning assumption  of  eternal  novity,  did  ye  think  to  get  one 
by  the  noble  prize,  and  henceforth  to  be  termed  the  Stream 
Dyerian  ? 

And  could  such  spacious  virtue  find  a  grave 
Beneath  the  imposthumed  bubble  of  a  wave  ? 

I  protest,  George,  you  shall  not  venture  out  again — no,  not 
by  daylight — without  a  sufficient  pair  of  spectacles — in  your 
musing  moods  especially.  Your  absence  of  mind  we  have  borne, 
till  your  presence  of  body  came  to  be  called  in  question  by  it. 
You  shall  not  go  wandering  into  Euripus  with  Aristotle,  if  we  can 
help  it.  Fie,  man,  to  turn  dipper  at  your  years,  after  your  many 
tracts  in  favor  of  sprinkling  only  ! 

I  have  nothing  but  water  in  my  head  o'nights  since  this  fright- 
ful accident.  Sometimes  I  am  with  Clarence  in  his  dream. 
At  others,  I  behold  Christian  beginning  to  sink,  and  crying  out  to 
his  good  brother  Hopeful  (that  is,  to  me),  "  I  sink  in  deep  waters ; 
the  billows  go  over  my  head,  all  the  waves  go  over  me.  Selah." 
Then  I  have  before  me  Palinurus,  just  letting  go  the  steerage.  I 
cry  out  too  late  to  save.  Next  follow — a  mournful  procession — 
suicidal  faces,  saved  against  their  wills  from  drowning  ;  dolefully 
trailing  a  length  of  reluctant  gratefulness,  with  ropy  weeds  pen- 
dent from  locks  of  watchet  hue — constrained  Lazari — Pluto's 
half-subjects — stolen  fees  from  the  grave — bilking  Charon  of  his 
fare.  At  their  head  Arion — or  is  it  G.  D.? — in  his  singing  gar- 
ments marcheth  singly,  with  harp  in  hand,  and  votive  garland, 
which  Machaon  (or  Dr.  Hawes)  snatcheth  straight,  intending  to 

PART  II.  7 


82  ELIA. 

suspend  it  to  the  stern  God  of  Sea.  Then  follow  dismal  streams 
of  Lethe,  in  which  the  half  drenched  on  earth  are  constrained  to 
drown  downright,  by  wharfs  where  Ophelia  twice  acts  her  muddy 
death. 

And,  doubtless,  there  is  some  notice  in  that  invisible  world, 
when  one  of  us  approacheth  (as  my  friend  did  so  lately)  to  their 
inexorable  precincts.  When  a  soul  knocks  once,  twice,  at  death's 
door,  the  sensation  aroused  within  the  palace  must  be  considera- 
ble ;  and  the  grim  Feature,  by  modern  science  so  often  dispos- 
sessed of  his  prey,  must  have  learned  by  this  time  to  pity  Tan- 
talus. 

A  pulse  assuredly  was  felt  along  the  line  of  the  Elysian  shades, 
when  the  near  arrival  of  G.  D.  was  announced  by  no  equivocal 
indications.  From  their  seats  of  Asphodel  arose  the  gentler  and 
the  graver  ghosts — poet,  or  historian — of  Grecian  or  of  Roman 
lore — to  crown  with  unfading  chaplets  the  half-finished  love-la- 
bors of  their  unwearied  scholiast.  Him  Markland  expected — him 
Tyrwhitt  hoped  to  encounter — him  the  sweet  lyrist  of  Peter 
House,  whom  he   had  barely  seen  upon  earth,*   with   newest 

airs  prepared  to  greet ;  and  patron  of  the  gentle  Christ's 

bay,-^who  should  have  been  his  patron  through  life — the  mild 
Askew,  with  longing  aspirations  leaned  foremost  from  his  vene- 
rable ^sculapian  chair,  to  welcome  into  that  happy  company  the 
matured  virtues  of  the  man,  whose  tender  scions  in  the  boy  \e 
himself  upon  earth  had  so  prophetically  fed  and  watered. 

*  Graium  tantum  vidit. 


SOME  SONNETS  OF  SIR  PHILIP  SYDNEY.  83 


SOME  SONNETS  OF  SIR  PHILIP  SYDNEY. 


Sydney's  Sonnets — I  speak  of  the  best  of  them — are  among  the 
very  best  of  their  sort.  They  fall  below  the  plain  moral  dignity, 
the  sanctity,  and  high  yet  modest  spirit  of  self-approval,  of  Milton, 
in  his  compositions  of  a  similar  structure.  They  are  in  truth 
what  Milton,  censuring  the  Arcadia,  says  of  that  work  (to  which 
they  are  a  sort  of  after-tune  or  application),  "  vain  and  amatori- 
ous  "  enough,  yet  the  things  in  their  kind  (as  he  confesses  to  be 
true  of  the  romance)  may  be  "  full  of  worth  and  wit."  They 
savor  of  the  Courtier,  it  must  be  allowed,  and  not  of  the  Common- 
wealthsman.  But  Milton  was  a  Courtier  when  he  wrote  the 
Masque  at  Ludlow  Castle,  and  still  more  a  Courtier  when  he 
composed  the  Arcades.  When  the  national  struggle  was  to  begin, 
he  becomingly  cast  these  vanities  behind  him  ;  and  if  the  order  of 
time  had  thrown  Sir  Philip  upon  the  crisis  which  preceded  the 
Revolution,  there  is  no  reason  why  he  should  not  have  acted  the 
same  part  in  that  emergency,  which  has  glorified  the  name  of  a 
later  Sydney.  He  did  not  want  for  plainness  or  boldness  of  spirit. 
His  letter  on  the  French  match  may  testify  he  could  speak  his 
mind  freely  to  Princes.  The  times  did  not  call  him  to  the 
scaffold. 

The  Sonnets  which  we  oflenest  call  to  mind  of  Milton  were  the 
composition  of  his  maturest  years.  Those  of  Sydney,  which  1  am 
about  to  produce,  were  written  in  the  very  hey-day  of  his  blood. 
They  are  stuck  full  of  amorous  fancies — far-fetched  conceits, 
befitting  his  occupation  :  for  True  Love  thinks  no  labor  to  send 
out  Thoughts  upon  the  vast,  and  more  than  Indian  voyages,  to 
bring  home  rich  pearls,  outlandish  wealth,  gums,  jewels,  spicery, 
to  sacrifice  ii.  self-depreciating  similitudes,  as  shadows  of  true 


84  ELIA. 

amiabilities  in  the  Beloved.  We  mu  Jt  be  Lovers — or  at  least  the 
cooling  touch  of  time,  the  circum  prcecordia  frigus  must  not  have 
so  damped  our  faculties,  as  to  take  away  our  recollection  that  we 
were  once  so — before  we  can  duly  appreciate  the  glorious  vanities 
and  graceful  hyperboles  of  the  passion.  The  images  which  lie 
before  our  feet  (though  by  some  accounted  the  only  natural)  are 
least  natural  for  the  high  Sydnean  love  to  express  its  fancies 
by.  They  may  serve  for  the  loves  of  Tibullus,  or  the  dear  Au- 
thor of  the  Schoolmistress  ;  for  passions  that  creep  and  whine  in 
Elegies  and  Pastoral  Ballads.  I  am  sure  Milton  never  loved  at 
this  rate.  I  am  afraid  some  of  his  addresses  (  ad  Leonoram,  I 
mean)  have  rather  erred  on  the  farther  side ;  and  that  the  poet 
came  not  much  short  of  a  religious  indecorum,  when  he  could 
thus  apostrophise  a  singing  girl ; — 

Angelua  unicuique  suus  (sic  credite  gentes) 

Obtigit  setheriis  ales  ab  ordinibus. 
Quid  mirum,  Leonora,  tibi  si  gloria  major, 

Nam  tua  praesentem  vox  sonat  ipsa  Deum  ? 
Aut  Deus,  aut  vacui  certe  mens  tertia  ccsli. 

Per  tua  secret©  guttura  serpit  agens ; 
Serpit  agens,  facilisque  docet  mortalia  corda 

Sensim  immortali  assuescere  posse  sono. 

Q,UOD  SI  CUNCTA  QUIDEM  Deus  EST,  PER  CUNCTAQUE  FUSUS, 

In  te  una  loquitur,  cetera  mutus  habet. 

This  is  loving  in  a  strange  fashion :  and  it  requires  some  can- 
dor of  construction  (besides  the  slight  darkening  of  a  dead  lan- 
guage) to  cast  a  veil  over  the  ugly  appearance  of  something  verj' 
like  blasphemy  in  the  last  two  verses.  I  think  the  Lover  woula 
have  been  staggered,  if  he  had  gone  about  to  express  the  same 
thought  in  English.  I  am  sure,  Sydney  has  no  flights  like  this. 
His  extravaganzas  do  not  strike  at  the  sky,  though  he  takes  leave 
to  adopt  the  pale  Dian  into  a  fellowship  with  his  mortal  passions. 


With  how  sad  steps,  0  Moon,  thou  climb'st  the  ski.B ; 
How  silently,  and  with  how  wan  a  face  ! 
What !  may  it  be,  that  even  in  heavenly  place 
That  busy  Archer  his  sharp  arrows  tries  ? 
Sure,  if  thatlong-vvith-love-acquainted  eyes 


SOME  SONNETS  OF  SIR  PHILIP  SYDNEY.  85 

Can  judge  of  love,  thou  feel'st  a  lover's  case; 
I  read  it  in  thy  looks  ;  thy  languisht  grace 
To  me,  that  feel  the  like,  thy  state  descries. 
Then,  even  of  fellowship,  0  Moon,  tell  me. 
Is  constant  love  deera'd  there  but  want  of  wit  ? 
Are  beauties  there  as  proud  as  here  they  be  ? 
Do  they  above  love  to  be  loved,  and  yet 
Those  lovers  scorn,  whom  that  love  doth  possess  ? 
Do  they  call  virtue  there — ungratefulness  ! 

The  last  line  of  this  poem  is  a  little  obscured  by  transposition. 
He  means,  Do  they  call  ungratefulness  there  a  virtue  ? 


Come,  Sleep,  0  Sleep,  the  certain  knot  of  peace, 
The  baiting  place  of  wit,  the  balm  of  wo. 
The  poor  man's  wealth,  the  prisoner's  release. 
The  indifferent  judge  between  the  high  and  low ; 
With  shield  of  proof  shield  me  from  out  the  prease" 
Of  those  fierce  darts  despair  at  me  doth  throw ; 

0  make  in  me  those  civil  wars  to  cease : 

1  will  good  tribute  pay,  if  thou  do  so. 

Take  thou  of  me  sweet  pillows,  sweetest  bed, 
A  chamber  deaf  to  noise,  and  blind  to  light ; 
A  rosy  garland,  and  a  weary  head. 
And  if  these  things,  as  being  thine  by  right. 
Move  not  thy  heavy  grace,  thou  shalt  in  me, 
Livelier  than  elsewhere,  Stella's  image  see. 


The  curious  wits,  seeing  dull  pensiveness 
Bewray  itself  in  my  long-settled  eyes. 
Whence  those  same  fumes  of  melancholy  rise. 
With  idle  pains,  and  missing  aim,  do  guess. 
Some  that  know  how  my  spring  I  did  address. 
Deem  that  my  Muse  some  fruit  of  knowledge  plies ; 
Others,  because  the  Prince  my  service  tries, 
Think,  that  I  think  state  errors  to  redress ; 
But  harder  judges  judge,  ambition's  rage. 
Scourge  of  itself,  still  climbing  slippery  place. 
Holds  my  young  brain  captived  in  golden  cage, 
0  fools,  or  over-wise  !  alas,  the  race 
Of  all  my  thoughts  hath  neither  stop  nor  start. 
But  only  Stella's  eyes  and  Stella's  heart. 

*  Press. 


86  ELI  I. 

IV. 

Because  I  oft  in  dark  abstracted  guise 

Seem  most  alone  in  greatest  company, 

With  dearth  of  words,  or  answers  quite  awry. 

To  them  that  would  make  speech  of  speech  arise ; 

They  deem,  and  of  their  doom  the  rumor  flies. 

That  poison  foul  of  bubbling  Pride  doth  lie 

So  in  my  swelling  breast,  that  only  I 

Fawn  on  myself,  and  others  do  despise  ; 

Yet  Pride,  I  think,  doth  not  my  soul  possess. 

Which  looks  too  oft  in  his  unflattering  glass ; 

But  one  worse  fault — Ambition — I  confess. 

That  makes  me  oft  my  best  friends  overpass. 

Unseen,  unheard— while  Thought  to  highest  place 

Bends  all  his  powers,  even  unto  Stella's  grace. 

V. 

Having  this  day,  my  horse,  my  hand,  my  lance. 
Guided  so  well  that  I  obtained  the  prize. 
Both  by  the  judgment  of  the  English  eyes, 
And  of  some  sent  from  that  sweet  enemy — ^France ; 
Horsemen  my  skill  in  horsemanship  advance. 
Townsfolk  my  strength  ;  a  daintier  judge  applies 
His  praise  to  sleight,  which  from  good  use  doth  rise  : 
Some  lucky  wits  impute  it  but  to  chance ; 
Others,  because  of  both  sides  I  do  take 
My  blood  from  them,  who  did  excel  in  this. 
Think  Nature  me  a  man  of  arms  did  make. 
How  far  they  shot  awry  !  the  true  cause  is, 
Stella  looked  on,  and  from  her  heavenly  face 
Sent  forth  the  beams  which  made  so  fair  my  race. 

vi. 
In  martial  sports  I  had  my  cunning  tried 
And  yet  to  break  more  staves  did  me  address. 
While  with  the  people's  shouts  (I  must  confess) 
Youth,  luck,  and  praise,  even  fiU'd  my  veins  with  pride- 
When  Cupid  having  me  (his  slave)  descried 
In  Mars'  livery,  prancing  in  the  press, 
"  What  now,  Sir  Fool !"  said  he :  "I  would  no  less : 
Look  here,  I  say."     I  look'd,  and  Stella  spied. 
Who  hard  by  made  a  window  send  forth  light. 
My  heart  then  quaked,  then  dazzled  were  mine  eyes : 
One  hand  forgot  to  rule,  th'  other  to  fight ; 
Nor  trumpet's  sound  I  heard,  nor  friendly  cries. 
My  foe  came  on,  and  beat  the  air  for  me — 
Till  that  her  blush  made  me  my  shame  to  see. 


SOME  SONNETS  OF  SIR  PHILIP  SYDNEY.  67 

VII. 

No  more,  my  dear,  no  more  these  counsels  try ; 

0  give  my  passions  leave  to  run  their  race; 
Let  Fortune  lay  on  me  her  worst  disgrace ; 
Let  folk  o'ercharged  with  brain  against  me  cry : 
Let  clouds  bedim  my  face,  break  in  mine  eye  ; 
Let  me  no  steps,  but  of  lost  labor  trace  ; 

Let  all  the  earth  with  scorn  recount  my  case — 
But  do  not  will  me  from  my  love  to  fly. 

1  do  not  envy  Aristotle's  wit. 

Nor  do  aspire  to  Caesar's  bleeding  fame  ; 
Nor  aught  do  care  though  some  above  me  sit. 
Nor  hope,  nor  wish,  another  course  to  frame  : 
But  that  which  once  may  win  thy  cruel  heart. 
Thou  art  my  wit,  and  thou  my  virtue  art. 

VIII. 

Love  still  a  boy,  and  oft  a  wanton,  is, 
School'd  only  by  his  mother's  tender  eye ; 
What  wonder  then,  if  he  his  lesson  miss. 
When  for  so  soft  a  rod  dear  play  he  try  ? 
And  yet  my  Star,  because  a  sugar'd  kiss 
In  sport  I  suck'd,  while  she  asleep  did  lie. 
Doth  lour,  nay  chide,  nay  threat,  for  only  this. 
Sweet,  it  was  saucy  Love,  not  humble  I. 
But  no  *scuse  serves ;  she  makes  her  wrath  appear 
In  beauty's  throne — see  now  who  dares  come  near 
Those  scarlet  judges,  threat'ning  bloody  pain  ? 

0  heav'nly  Fool,  thy  most  kiss-worthy  face 
Anger  invests  with  such  a  lovely  grace. 
That  anger's  self  I  needs  must  kiss  again. 

IX. 

1  never  drank  of  Aganippe  well. 
Nor  ever  did  in  shade  of  Tempe  sit, 

And  Muses  scorn  with  vulgar  brains  to  dwell ; 

Poor  layman  I,  for  sacred  rites  unfit. 

Some  do  I  hear  of  Poet's  fury  tell. 

But  (God  wot)  wot  not  what  they  mean  by  it ; 

And  this  I  swear  by  blackest  brook  of  hell, 

I  am  no  pick-purse  of  another's  wit. 

How  falls  it  then,  that  with  so  smooth  an  ease 

My  thoughts  I  speak,  and  what  I  speak  doth  flow 

In  verse,  and  that  my  veTse  best  wits  doth  please  ? 

Guess  me  the  cause — what  is  it  thus  ? — fye,  no. 

Or  so  ?— much  less.     How  then  ?  sure  thus  it  is. 

My  lips  are  sweet,  inspired  with  Stella's  kiss. 


89  ELIA. 

X. 

Of  all  the  kings  that  ever  here  did  reign, 
Edward,  named  Fourth,  as  first  in  praise  I  name. 
Not  for  his  fair  outside,  nor  well-lined  brain — 
Although  less  gifts  imp  feathers  oft  on  Fame. 
Nor  that  he  could,  young-wise,  wise-valiant,  frame 
His  sire's  revenge,  join'd  with  a  kingdom's  gain ; 
And,  gain'd  by  Mars  could  yet  mad  Mars  so  tame. 
That  Balance  weigh'd  what  Sword  did  late  obtain. 
Nor  that  he  made  the  Floure-de-luce  so  'fraid. 
Though  strongly  hedged  of  bloody  Lions'  paws 
That  witty  Lewis  to  him  a  tribute  paid. 
Nor  this,  nor  that,  nor  any  such  small  cause — 
But  only,  for  this  worthy  knight  durst  prove 
To  lose  his  crown  rather  than  fall  his  love. 

XI. 

0  happjt  Thames,  that  didst  my  Stella  bear, 

1  saw  thyself,  with  many  a  smiling  line 
Upon  thy  cheH*-tnl  face,  Joy's  livery  wear. 
While  those  fair  planets  on  thy  streams  did  shine 
The  boat  for  joy  could  not  to  dance  forbear, 
While  wanton  winds,  with  beauty  so  divine 
Ravish'd,  stay'd  not,  till  in  her  golden  hair 
They  did  themselves  (0  sweetest  prison)  twine, 
And  fain  those  iEol's  youth  there  would  they  stay 
Have  made  ;  but,  forced  by  nature  still  to  fly. 
First  did  with  puffing  kiss  those  locks  display. 
She,  so  dishevell'd,  blush'd  ;  from  window  I 
With  sight  thereof  cried  out,  0  fair  disgrace. 

Let  honor's  self  to  thee  grant  highest  place  ! 


Highway,  since  you  my  chief  Parnassus  be  ; 
And  that  my  Muse,  to  some  ears  not  unsweet. 
Tempers  her  words  to  trampling  horses'  feet. 
More  soft  than  to  a  chamber  melody  ; 
Now  blessed  You  bear  onward  blessed  Me 
To  Her,  where  I  my  heart  safe  left  shall  meet, 
My  Muse  and  I  must  you  of  duty  greet 
With  thanks  and  wishes,  wishing  thankfully. 
Be  you  still  fair,  honor'd  by  public  heed. 
By  no  encroachment  wrong'd  and  time  forgot; 
Nor  blamed  for  blood,  nor  shamed  for  sinful  deed 
And  that  you  know,  I  envy  you  no  lot 
Of  highest  wish,  I  wish  j'ou  so  much  bliss 
Hundreds  of  years  you  Stella's  feet  may  kiss. 


SOME  SONNETS  OF  SIR  PHILIP  SYDNEY.  89 

Of  the  foregoing,  the  first,  the  second,  and  the  last  sonnet,  are 
my  favorites.  But  the  general  beauty  of  them  all  is,  that  they 
are  so  perfectly  characteristical.  The  spirit  of  "  learning  and  of 
chivalry," — of  which  union,  Spenser  has  entitled  Sydney  to  have 
been  the  "president," — shines  through  them.  I  confess  I  can 
see  nothing  of  the  "  jejune  "  or  "  frigid  "  in  them ;  much  less 
of  the  "stiff"  and  "  cumbrous" — which  I  have  sometimes  heard 
objected  to  the  Arcadia.  The  verse  runs  off  swiftly  and  gallantly. 
It  might  have  been  tuned  to  the  trumpet ;  or  tempered  (as  him- 
self expressed  it)  to  "  trampling  horses'  feet."  They  abound  in 
felicitous  phrases — 

0  heav'nly  Fool,  thy  most  kiss-worthy  face — 

8th  Sonnet. 


Sweet  pillows,  sweetest  bed  ; 


A  chamber  deaf  to  noise,  and  blind  to  light; 
A  rosy  garland,  and  a  weary  head. 

2d  Sonnet. 

That  sweet  enemy,— France— 

5th  Sonnet. 

But  they  are  not  rich  in  words  only  in  vague  and  unlocaliscd 
feelings — the  failing  too  much  of  some  poetry  of  the  present  day 
— they  are  full,  material,  and  circumstantiated.  Time  and  place 
appropriates  every  one  of  them.  It  is  not  a  fever  of  passion 
wasting  itself  upon  a  thin  diet  of  dainty  words,  but  a  transcendant 
passion  pervading  and  illuminating  action,  pursuits,  studies,  feats 
of  arms,  the  opinions  of  contemporaries  and  his  judgment  of 
them.  An  historical  thread  runs  through  them,  which  almost 
affixes  a  date  to  them ;  marks  the  when  and  where  they  were 
written. 

I  have  dwelt  the  longer  upon  what  I  conceive  the  merit  of  these 
poems,  because  I  have  been  hurt  by  the  wantonness  (I  wish  I 
could  treat  it  by  a  gentler  name)  with  which  W.  H.  takes  every 
occasion  of  insulting  the  memory  of  Sir  Philip  Sydney.  But  the 
decisions  of  the  Author  of  Table  Talk,  &c.  (most  profound  and 
subtle  where  they  are,  as  for  the  mo^  part,  just),  are  more  safely 
to  be  relied  upon,  on  subjects  and  authors  he  has  a  partiality  for, 
than  on  such  as  he  has  conceived  an  accidental  prejudice  against. 


90  ELIA. 

Milton  wrote  Sonnets,  and  was  a  king-hater  ;  and  it  was  conge- 
nial perhaps  to  sacrifice  a  courtier  to  a  patriot.  But  I  was  un- 
willing to  lose  a  jine  idea  from  my  mind.  The  noble  images, 
passions,  sentiments,  and  poetical  delicacies  of  character,  scattered 
all  over  the  Arcadia  (spite  of  some  stiffness  and  encumberment), 
justify  to  me  the  character  which  his  contemporaries  have  left 
us  of  the  writer.  I  cannot  think  with  the  Critic,  that  Sir  Philip 
Sydney  was  that  opprobrious  thing  which  a  foolish  nobleman  in  his 
insolent  hostility  chose  to  term  him.  I  call  to  mind  the  epitaph 
made  on  him,  to  guide  me  to  juster  thoughts  of  him  ;  and  I  re- 
pose upon  the  beautiful  lines  in  the  "  Friend's  Passion  for  his 
Astrophel,"  printed  with  the  Elegies  of  Spenser  and  others. 

You  knew — who  knew  not  Astrophel  ? 
(That  I  should  live  to  say  I  knew, 
And  have  not  in  possession  still !) 
Things  known  permit  me  to  renew— 

Of  him  you  know  his  merit  such, 

I  cannot  say— you  hear — too  much. 

Within  these  woods  of  Arcady 
He  chief  delight  and  pleasure  took ; 
And  on  the  mountain  Partheny, 
Upon  the  crystal  liquid  brook. 

The  Muses  met  him  every  day. 

That  taught  him  sing,  to  write,  and  say 

When  he  descended  down  the  mount. 
His  personage  seemed  most  divine  : 
A  thousand  graces  one  might  count 
Upon  his  lovely  cheerful  eyne. 

To  hear  him  speak,  and  sweetly  smile. 

You  were  in  Paradise  the  while. 

A  sweet  attractive  kind  of  grace : 
A  full  assurance  given  by  looks  ; 
Continual  comfort  in  a  face^ 
The  lineaments  of  Gospel  books — 

I  trow  that  count'nance  cannot  lye. 

Whose  thoughts  are  legible  in  the  eye. 


Above  all  others  this  is  he, 
Which  erst  approved  in  his  song, 


SOME  SONNETS  OF  SlA  PHILIP  SYDNEY  91 

That  love  and  honor  might  agree, 
And  that  pure  love  will  do  no  wrong. 

Sweet  saints,  it  is  no  sin  or  blame 

To  love  a  man  of  virtuous  name. 

Did  never  love  so  sweetly  breathe 
In  any  mortal  breast  before : 
Did  never  Muse  inspire  beneath 
A  Poet's  brain  with  finer  store. 

He  wrote  of  Love  with  high  conceit. 

And  Beauty  rear'd  above  her  height 

Or  let  any  one  read  the  deeper  sorrows  (grief  running  into 
rage)  in  the  Poem, — the  last  in  the  collection  accompanying  the 
above, — which  from  internal  testimony  I  believe  to  be  Lord 
Brooke's, — beginning  with  "Silence  augmenteth  grief," — and 
then  seriously  ask  himself,  whether  the  subject  of  such  absorbing 
and  confounding  regrets  could  have  been  that  thing  which  Lo^d 
Oxford  termed  him. 


94  ELIA. 


ftEWSPAPERS  THIRTY-FIVE  YEARS  AGO 


Dan  Stuart  once  told  us,  that  he  did  not  remember  that  he  ever 
deliberately  walked  into  the  Exhibition  at  Somerset  House  in  his 
life.  He  might  occasionally  have  escorted  a  party  of  ladies 
across  the  way  that  were  going  in  ;  but  he  never  went  in  of  his 
own  head.  Yet  the  office  of  the  Morning  Post  newspaper  stood 
then  just  where  it  does  now — we  are  carrying  you  back,  Reader, 
some  thirty  years  or  more — with  its  gilt-globe-topt  front  facing 
that  emporium  of  our  artists'  grand  Annual  Exposure.  VVe 
sometimes  wish,  that  we  had  observed  the  same  abstinence  with 
Daniel. 

A  word  or  two  of  D.  S.  He  ever  appeared  to  us  one  of  the 
finest-tempered  of  Editors.  Perry,  of  the  Morning  Chronicle,  was 
equally  pleasant,  with  a  dash,  no  slight  one  either,  of  the  courtier. 
S.  was  frank,  plain,  and  English  all  over.  ^We  have  worked  for 
both  these  gentlemen. 

It  is  soothing  to  contemplate  the  head  of  the  Ganges ;  to  trace 
the  first  little  bubblings  of  a  mighty  river ; 

With  holy  reverencei  to  approach  the  rocks, 
Whence  glide  the  streams  renowned  in  ancient  song. 

Fired  with  a  perusal  of  the  Abyssinian  Pilgrim's  exploratory 
ramblings  after  the  cradle  of  the  infant  Nilus,  we  well  remember 
on  one  fine  summer  holiday  (a  "  whole  day's  leave"  we  called 
it  at  Christ's  hospital)  sallying  forth  at  rise  of  sun,  not  very  well 
provisioned  either  for  such  an  undertaking,  to  trace  the  current 
of  the  New  River — Middletonian  stream ! — to  its  scaturient 
source,  as  we  had  read,  in  meadows  by  fair  Amwell.  Gallantly 
did  we  commence  our  soltary  quest — for  it  was  essential  to  the 


NEWSPAPERS  THIRTY-FIVE  YEA  RS  AGO.  93 

dignity  of  a  Discovery,  that  no  eye  of  schoolboy,  save  our  own, 
should  beam  on  the  detection.  By  flowery  spots,  and  verdant 
lanes  skirting  Hornsey,  Hope  trained  us  on  in  many  a  bafiling 
turn ;  endless,  hopeless  meanders,  as  it  seemed ;  or  as  if  the 
jealous  waters  had  dodged  us,  reluctant  to  have  the  humble  spot 
of  their  nativity  revealed ;  till  spent,  and  nigh  famished  before  set 
of  the  same  sun,  we  sate  down  somewhere  by  Bowes  Farm  near 
Tottenham,  with  a  tithe  of  our  proposed  labors  only  yet  accom- 
plished ;  sorely  convinced  in  spirit,  that  that  Brucian  enterprise 
was  as  yet  too  arduous  for  our  young  shoulders. 

Not  more  refreshing  to  the  thirsty  curiosity  of  the  traveller  is 
the  tracing  of  some  mighty  waters  up  to  their  shallow  fontlet, 
than  it  is  to  a  pleased  and  candid  reader  to  go  back  to  the  inex- 
perienced essays,  the  first  callow  flights  in  authorship,  of  some 
established  name  in  literature  ;  from  the  Gnat  which  preluded  to 
the  jEneid,  to  the  Duck  which  Samuel  Johnson  trod  on. 

In  those  days  every  Morning  Paper,  as  an  essential  retainer  to 
its  establishment,  kept  an  autlior,  who  was  bound  to  furnish  daily 
a  quantum  of  witty  paragraphs.  Sixpence  a  joke — and  it  was 
thought  pretty  high  too — was  Dan  Stuart's  settled  remuneration 
in  these  cases.  The  chat  of  the  day,  scandal,  but,  above  all, 
dress,  furnished  the  material.  The  length  of  no  paragraph  was 
to  exceed  seven  lines.  Shorter  they  might  be,  but  they  must  be 
poignant. 

A  fashion  of  jlesh,  or  rather  pm/j-colorcd  hose  for  the  ladies, 
luckily  coming  up  at  the  juncture  when  we  were  on  our  probation 
for  the  place  of  Chief  Jester  to  S.'s  Paper,  established  our  reputa- 
tion in  that  line.  We  were  pronounced  a  "  capital  hand."  O 
the  conceits  which  we  varied  upon  red  in  all  its  prismatic  differ- 
ences! from  the  trite  and  obvious  flower  of  Cytherea,  to  the 
flaming  costume  of  the  lady  that  has  her  sitting  upon  "  many 
waters."  Then  there  was  the  collateral  topic  of  ankles.  What 
an  occasion  to  a  truly  chaste  writer,  like  ourself,  of  touching  that 
nice  brink,  and  yet  never  trembling  over  it,  of  a  seemingly  ever 
approximating  something  "  not  quite  proper ;"  while,  like  a  skil- 
ful posture-master,  balancing  betwixt  decorums  and  their  oppo- 
sites,  he  keeps  the  line,  from  which  a  hair's-breadth  deviation  is 
destruction  ;    hovering  in    the   confines  of  light   and   darkness, 


94  ELIA. 

or  "vhere  "  both  seem  either ;"  a  hazy  uncertain  delicacy ; 
Autolycus-like  in  the  Play,  still  putting  off  his  expectant  auditory 
with  "  Whoop,  do  me  no  harm,  good  man !"  But,  above  all,  that 
conceit  arrided  us  most  at  that  time,  and  still  tickles  our  midriff 
to  remember,  where,  allusively  to  the  flight  of  Astroea — ultima 
Ccdestum  terras  reliquit — we  pronounced — in  reference  to  the 
stockings  still — that  Modesty,  taking  her  final  leave  of  mor- 
tals, HER  LAST  Blush  was  visible  in  her  ascent  to  the 
Heavens  by  the  tract  of  the  glowing  instep.  This  might 
be  called  the  crowning  conceit ;  and  was  esteemed  tolerable 
writing  in  those  days. 

But  the  fashion  of  jokes,  with  all  other  things,  passes  away ; 
as  did  the  transient  mode  which  had  so  favored  us.  The  ankles 
of  our  fair  friends  in  a  few  weeks  began  to  reassume  their  white- 
ness, and  left  us  scarce  a  leg  to  stand  upon.  Other  female  whims 
followed,  but  none  methought  so  pregnant,  so  invitatory  of  shrewd 
conceits,  and  more  than  single  meanings. 

Somebody  has  said,  that  to  swallow  six  cross-buns  daily,  con- 
secutively for  a  fortnight,  would  surfeit  the  stoutest  digestion. 
But  to  have  to  furnish  as  many  jokes  daily,  and  that  not  for  a 
fortnight,  but  for  a  long  twelvemonth,  as  we  were  constrained  to 
do,  was  a  little  harder  exaction.  "  Man  goeth  forth  to  his  work 
until  the  evening" — from  a  reasonable  hour  in  the  morning,  we 
presume  it  was  meant.  Now,  as  our  main  occupation  took  us  up 
from  eight  till  five  every  day  in  the  City ;  and  as  our  evening 
hours,  at  that  time  of  life,  had  generally  to  do  with  anything 
rather  than  business,  it  follows,  that  the  only  time  we  could  spare 
for  this  manufactory  of  jokes — our  supplementary  livelihood,  that 
supplied  us  in  every  want  beyond  mere  bread  and  cheese — was 
exactly  that  part  of  the  day  which  (as  we  have  heard  of  No  Man's 
Land)  may  be  fitly  denominated  No  Man's  Time ;  that  is,  no  time 
in  which  a  man  ought  to  be  up  and  awake,  in.  To  speak  more 
plainly,  it  is  that  time  of  an  hour,  or  an  hour  and  a  half's  dura- 
tion, in  which  a  man,  whose  occasions  call  him  up  so  preposte- 
rously, has  to  wait  for  his  breakfast. 

O  those  head-aches  at  dawn  of  day,  when  at  five,  or  half-past 
five  in  su  nmer,  and  not  much  later  in  the  dark  seasons,  we 
were  compelled  to  rise,  having  been  perhaps  not  above  four  hours 


I 


NEWSPAPERS  THIRTY-FIVE  YEARS  AGO.  95 

in  bed — (for  we  were  no  go-to-beds  with  the  lamb,  though  we 
anticipated  the  lark  ofttimes  in  her  rising — we  like  a  parting  cup, 
at  midnight,  as  all  young  men  did  before  these  effeminate  times, 
and  to  have  our  friends  about  us — we  were  not  constellated  under 
Aquarius,  that  watery  sign,  and  therefore  incapable  of  Bacchus,  cold, 
washy,  bloodless— we  were  none  of  your  Basilian  water-sponges, 
nor  had  taken  our  degrees  at  Mount  Ague — we  were  right  toping 
Capulets,  jolly  companions,  we  and  they) — but  to  have  to  get  up, 
as  we  said  before,  curtailed  of  half  our  fair  sleep,  fasting,  with 
only  a  dim  vista  of  refreshing  bohea,  in  the  distance — to  be 
necessitated  to  rouse  ourselves  at  the  detestable  rap  of  an  old  hag 
of  a  domestic,  who  seemed  to  take  a  diabolical  pleasure  in  her 
announcement  that  it  was  "time  to  rise;"  and  whose  chappy 
knuckles  we  have  often  yearned  to  amputate,  and  string  them  up 
at  our  chamber  door,  to  be  a  terror  to  all  such  unseasonable  rest- 
breakers  in  future 

"  Facil"  and  sweet,  as  Virgil  sings,  had  been  the  "  descending" 
of  the  over-night,  balmy  the  first  sinking  of  the  heavy  head  upon 
the  pillow  ;  but  to  get  up,  as  he  goes  on  to  say, 

— revocare  gradus,  superasque  evadere  ad  auras — 

and  to  get  up  moreover  to  make  jokes  with  malice  prepended — 
there  was  the  "  labor,"  there  the  "  work." 

No  Egyptian  taskmaster  ever  devised  a  slavery  like  to  that, 
our  slavery.  No  fractious  operants  ever  turned  out  for  half  the 
tyranny  which  this  necessity  exercised  upon  us.  Half  a  dozen 
jests  in  a  day  (bating  Sundays  too),  why  it  seems  nothing !  We 
make  twice  the  number  every  day  in  our  lives  as  a  matter  of 
•  course,  and  claim  no  Sabbatical  exemptions.  But  then  they 
come  into  our  head.  But  when  the  head  has  to  go  out  to  them— 
when  the  mountain  must  go  to  Mahomet — 

Reader,  try  it  for  once,  only  for  one  short  twelvemonth. 

It  was  not  every  week  that  a  fashion  of  pink  stockings  came 
up ;  but  mostly,  instead  of  it,  some  rugged,  untractable  subject ; 
some  topic  impossible  to  be  contorted  into  the  risible ;  some  fea- 
ture on  which  no  smile  could  play  ;  some  flint,  from  which  no 
process  of  ingenuity  30uld  procure  a  scintillation.     There  they 


96  ELIA. 

lay ;  there  yoxir  appointed  tale  of  brick-making  was  set  before  you, 
which  you  must  finish,  with  or  without  straw,  as  it  happened. 
The  craving  Dragon — the  Public — like  him  in  Bel's  temple- 
must  be  fed ;  it  expected  its  daily  rations ;  and  Daniel,  and  our- 
selves, to  do  us  justice,  did  the  best  we  could  on  this  side  bursting 
him. 

While  we  were  wringing  out  coy  sprightlinesses  for  the  Post, 
and  writhing  under  the  toil  of  what  is  called  "  easy  writing," 
Bob  Allen,  our  quondam  schoolfellow,  was  tapping  his  impractica- 
ble brains  in  a  like  service  for  the  "  Oracle."  Not  that  Robert 
troubled  himself  much  about  wit.  If  his  paragraphs  had  a 
sprightly  air  about  them,  it  was  sufficient.  He  carried  this  non- 
chalance so  far  at  last,  that  a  matter  of  intelligence,  and  that  no 
very  important  one,  was  not  seldom  palmed  upon  his  employers 
for  a  good  jest ;  for  example  sake — "  Walking  yesterday  morning 
casually  down  Snow  Hill,  who  sJtould  we  meet  but  Mr.  Deputy 
Humphreys  f  we  rejoice  to  add,  that  the  worthy  Deputy  appeared  to 
enjoy  a  good  state  of  liealth.  We  do  not  ever  remember  to  have  seen 
him  look  better. ^^  This  gentleman  so  surprisingly  met  upon  Snow 
dill,  from  some  peculiarities  in  gait  or  gesture,  was  a  constant 
butt  for  mirth  to  the  small  paragraph-mongers  of  the  day ;  and 
our  friend  thought  that  he  might  have  his  fling  at  him  with  the 
rest.  We  met  A.  in  Hoi  born  shortly  after  this  extraordinary  ren- 
counter, which  he  told  with  tears  of  satisfaction  in  his  eyes,  and 
chuckling  at  the  anticipated  effects  of  its  announcement  next  day 
in  the  paper.  W^e  did  not  quite  comprehend  where  the  wit  of  it 
lay  at  the  time  ;  nor  was  it  easy  to  be  detected,  when  the  thing 
came  out  advantaged  by  type  and  letter-press.  He  had  better 
have  met  anything  that  morning  than  a  Common  Council  Man. 
His  services  v/ere  shortly  after  dispensed  with,  on  the  plea  that 
his  paragraphs  of  late  had  been  deficient  in  point.  The  one  in 
question,  it  must  be  owned,  had  an  air,  in  the  opening  especially, 
proper  to  awaken  curiosity  ;  and  the  sentiment,  or  moral,  wears 
the  aspect  of  humanity  and  good  neighborly  feeling.  But  some- 
how the  conclusion  was  not  judged  altogether  to  answer  to  the 
magnificent  promise  of  the  premises.  We  traced  our  friend's  pen 
afterwards  in  the  "  True  Briton,"  the  "  Star,"  the  "  Traveller  " 


NEWSPAPERS  T[iIRTY-FlVE  YEAPvS  AGO.  97 

— from  all  which  he  was  successively  dismissed,  the  Proprietors 
having  "no  further  occasion  for  his  services."  Nothing  was 
easier  than  to  detect  him.  When  wit  failed,  or  topics  ran  low, 
there  constantly  appeared  the  following — "  It  is  not  generally 
known  that  the  three  Blue  Balls  at  the  Pawnbrokers^  shops  are 
the  ancient  arms  of  Lonibardy.  The  Lomhards  were  the  first 
money-hrokers  in  Europe. ^^  Bob  has  done  more  to  set  the  public 
right  on  this  important  point  of  blazonry,  than  the  whole  College 
of  Heralds. 

The  appointment  of  a  regular  wit  has  long  ceased  to  be  a  part 
of  the  economy  of  a  Morning  Paper.  Editors  find  their  own 
jokes,  or  do  as  well  without  them.  Parson  Este,  and  Topham, 
brought  up  the  set  custom  of  "  witty  paragraphs "  first  in  the 
"  World."  Boaden  was  a  reigning  paragraphist  in  his  day,  and 
succeeded  poor  Allen  in  the  "  Oracle."  But,  as  we  said,  the 
fashion  of  jokes  passes  away  ;  and  it  would  be  difiicult  to  discover 
in  the  biographer  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  any  traces  of  that  vivacity  and 
fancy  which  charmed  the  whole  town  at  the  commencement  of 
the  present  century.  Even  the  prelusive  delicacies  of  the  pre- 
sent writer — the  curt  "  Astrsean  allusion  " — would  be  thought 
pedantic  and  out  of  date  in  these  days. 

From  the  office  of  the  Morning  Post  (for  we  may  as  well  ex- 
haust our  Newspaper  Reminiscences  at  once)  by  change  of  pro- 
perty in  the  paper,  we  were  transferred,  mortifying  exchange !  to 
the  office  of  the  Albion  Newspaper,  late  Rackstrow's  Museum,  in 
Fleet  street.  What  a  transition — from  a  handsome  apartment, 
from  rose- wood  desks,  and  silver  ink-stands,  to  an  office — no  office, 
but  a  den  rather,  but  just  redeemed  from  the  occupation  of  dead 
monsters,  of  which  it  seemed  redolent — from  the  centre  of  loy- 
alty and  fashion,  to  a  focus  of  vulgarity  and  sedition  !  Here  in 
murky  closet,  inadequate  from  its  square  contents  to  the  receipt 
of  the  two  bodies  of  Editor,  and  humble  paragraph-maker,  together 
at  one  time,  sat  in  the  discharge  of  his  new  editorial  functions 
(the  "  Bigod  "  of  Elia)  the  redoubted  John  Fenwick. 

F.,  without  a  guinea  in  his  pocket,  and  having  left  not  many 
in  the  pockets  of  his  friends  whom  he  might  command,  had  pur- 
chased (on  tick  doubtless)  the  whole  and  sole  Editorshipi  Proprie- 

PART   II.  8 


98  ELIA. 

torship,  with  all  the  rights  and  titles  (such  as  they  were  worth)  of 
the  Albion  from  one  Lovell ;  of  whom  we  know  nothing,  save 
that  he  had  stood  in  the  pillory  for  a  libel  on  the  Prince  of  Wales. 
With  this  hopeless  concern — for  it  had  been  sinking  ever  since  its 
commencement,  and  could  now  reckon  upon  not  more  than  a  hun- 
dred subscribers — F.  resolutely  determined  upon  pulling  down 
the  Government  in  the  first  instance,  and  making  both  our  for- 
tunes by  way  of  corollary.  For  seven  weeks  and  more  did  this 
infatuated  democrat  go  about  borrowing  seven-shilling  pieces,  and 
lesser  coin,  to  meet  the  daily  demands  of  the  Stamp  office,  which 
allowed  no  credit  to  publications  of  that  side  in  politics.  An  out- 
cast from  politer  bread,  we  attached  our  small  talents  to  the  for- 
lorn fortunes  of  our  friend.  Our  occupation  now  v/as  to  write 
treason. 

Recollections  of  feelings — which  were  all  that  now  remained 
from  our  first  boyish  heats  kindled  by  the  French  Revolution, 
when,  if  we  were  misled,  we  erred  in  the  company  of  some  who 
are  accounted  very  good  men  now — rather  than  any  tendency  at 
this  time  to  Republican  doctrines — assisted  us  in  assuming  a  style 
of  writing,  while  the  paper  lasted,  consonant  in  no  very  under 
tone — to  the  right  earnest  fanaticism  of  F.  Our  cue  was  now  to 
insinuate,  rather  than  recommend,  possible  abdications.  Blocks, 
axes,  Whitehall  tribunals,  were  covered  with  flowers  of  so  cun- 
ning a  periphrasis — as  Mr.  Bayes  says,  never  naming  the  thing 
directly — that  the  keen  eye  of  an  Attorney  General  was  insuffi- 
cient to  detect  the  lurking  snake  among  them.  There  were  times, 
indeed,  when  we  sighed  for  our  more  gentleman-like  occupation 
under  Stuart.  But  with  change  of  masters  it  is  ever  change  of 
service.  Already  one  paragraph,  and  another,  as  we  learned 
afterwards  from  a  gentleman  at  the  Treasury,  had  begun  to  be 
marked  at  that  office,  with  a  view  of  its  being  submitted  at  least 
to  the  attention  of  the  proper  Law  Officers — when  an  unlucky, 

or   rather  lucky  epigram  from  our  pen,  aimed  at  Sir  J s 

M h,  who  was  on  the  eve  of  departing  for  India  to  reap  the 

fruits  of  his  apostasy,  as  F.  pronounced  it  (it  is  hardly  worth 
particularising),  happening  to  offend  the  nice  sense  of  Lord,  or, 
as  he  then  delighted  to  be  palled;,  ^itizen  Stanhope,  deprived  F.  at 


NEWSPAPERS  THIRTY-FIVE  YEARS  AGO.  99 

once  of  the  last  hopes  of  a  guinea  from  the  last  patron  that  had 
stuck  by  us ;  and  breaking  up  our  establishment,  left  us  to  the 
safe,  but  somewhat  mortifying,  neglect  of  the  Crown  Lawyers. 
It  was  about  this  time,  or  a  little  earlier,  that  Dan  Stuart  made  that 
curious  confession  to  us,  that  he  had  "  never  deliberately  walked 
into  an  Exhibition  at  Somerset  House  in  his  life." 


.1 


100  ELIA. 


BARRENNESS  OF  THE  IMAGINATIVE  FACULTY 

IN  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART. 


Hogarth  excepted,  can  we  produce  any  one  painter  within  the 
last  fifty  years,  or  since  the  humor  of  exhibiting  began,  that  has 
treated  a  story  imaginatively  ?  By  this  we  mean,  upon  whom  his 
subject  has  so  acted,  that  it  has  seemed  to  direct  him — not  to  be  ar- 
ranged by  him  ?  Any  upon  whom  its  leading  or  collateral  points 
have  impressed  themselves  so  tyrannically,  that  he  dared  not 
treat  it  otherwise,  lest  he  should  falsify  a  revelation  ?  Any  that 
has  imparted  to  his  compositions,  not  merely  so  much  truth 
as  is  enough  to  convey  a  story  with  clearness,  but  that  indi- 
vidualising property,  which  should  keep  the  subject  so  treated 
distinct  in  feature  from  every  other  subject,  however  similar,  and 
to  common  apprehensions  almost  identical ;  so  as  that  we  might 
say,  this  and  this  part  could  have  found  an  appropriate  place  in 
no  other  picture  in  the  world  but  this  ?  Is  there  anything  in  mo- 
dern art — we  will  not  demand  that  it  should  be  equal — but  in 
any  way  analogous  to  what  Titian  has  effected,  in  that  wonderful 
bringing  together  of  two  times  in  the  "  Ariadne,"  in  the  National 
Gallery  1  Precipitous,  with  his  reeling  satyr  rout  about  him, 
re-peopling  and  re-illuming  suddenly  the  waste  places,  drunk  with 
a  new  fury  beyond  the  grape,  Bacchus,  born  in  fire,  fire-like  flings 
himself  at  the  Cretan.  This  is  the  time  present.  With  this  tell- 
ing of  the  story — an  artist,  and  no  ordinary  one,  might  remain 
richly  proud.  Guido,  in  his  harmonious  version  of  it,  saw  no 
further.  But  from  the  depths  of  the  imaginative  spirit  Titian  has 
recalled  past  time,  and  laid  it  contributory  with  the  present  to  one 
simultaneous  effect.     With  the  desert  all  ringing  with  the  mad 


ON  THF  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART.  101 

cymbals  of  his  followers,  made  lucid  with  the  presence  and  new 
offers  of  a  god — as  if  unconscious  of  Bacchus,  or  but  idly  casting 
her  eyes  as  upon  some  unconcerning  pageant — her  soul  undis- 
tracted  from  Theseus — Ariadne  is  still  pacing  the  solitary  shore 
in  as  much  heart-silence,  and  in  almost  the  same  local  solitude, 
with  which  she  awoke  at  day-break  to  catch  the  forlorn  last 
glances  of  the  sail  that  bore  away  the  Athenian. 

Here  are  two  points  miraculously  co-uniting ;  fierce  society, 
with  the  feeling  of  solitude  still  absolute ;  noon-day  revelations, 
with  the  accidents  of  the  dull  grey  dawn  unquenched  and  linger- 
ing ;  the  present  Bacchus,  with  the  pa^i  Ariadne ;  two  stories, 
with  double  Time  ;  separate  and  harmonising.  Had  the  artist 
made  the  woman  one  shade  less  indifferent  to  the  God ;  still 
more,  had  she  expressed  a  rapture  at  his  advent,  where  would 
have  been  the  story  of  the  mighty  desolation  of  the  heart  pre- 
vious ?  merged  in  the  insipid  accident  of  a  flattering  offer  met 
with  a  welcome  acceptance.  The  broken  heart  for  Theseus  was 
not  lightly  to  be  pieced  up  by  a  God. 

We  have  before  us  a  fine  rough  print,  from  a  picture  by  Ra- 
phael in  the  Vatican.  It  is  the  Presentation  of  the  new-born  Eve 
to  Adam  by  the  Almighiy.  A  fairer  mother  of  mankind  we 
might  imagine,  and  a  goodlier  sire  perhaps  of  men  since  born. 
But  these  are  matters  subordinate  to  the  conception  of  the  situation, 
displayed  in  this  extraordinary  production.  A  tolerably  modern 
artist  would  have  been  satisfied  with  tempering  certain  raptures 
of  connubial  anticipation,  with  a  suitable  acknowledgment  to  the 
Giver  of  the  blessing,  in  the  countenance  of  the  first  bridegroom  ; 
something  like  the  divided  attention  of  the  child  (Adam  was  here 
a  child-man)  between  the  given  toy,  and  the  mother  who  had  just 
blessed  it  with  the  bauble.  This  is  the  obvious,  the  first-sight 
view,  the  sup  rficial.  An  artist  of  a  higher  grade,  considering 
the  awful  presence  they  were  in,  would  have  taken  care  to  sub- 
tract something  from  the  expression  of  the  more  human  passion, 
and  to  heighten  the  more  spiritual  one.  This  would  be  as  much 
as  an  exhibition  goer,  from  the  opening  of  Somerset  House  to  last 
year's  show,  has  been  encouraged  to  look  for.  It  is  obvious  to 
hint  at  a  lower  expression  yet,  in  a  picture  that,  for  respects  of 
drawing  and  coloring,  might  be  deemed  not  wholly  inadmissible 


108  ELIA. 

within  these  art-fostering  walls,  in  which  the  raptures  should  be  as 
ninety-nine,  the  gratitude  as  one,  or  perhaps  zero !  By  neither 
the  one  passion  nor  the  other  has  Raphael  expounded  the  situation 
of  Adam.  Singly  upon  his  brow  sits  the  absorbing  sense  of  won- 
der at  the  created  miracle.  The  moment  is  seized  by  the  intuitive 
artist,  perhaps  not  self-conscious  of  his  art,  in  which  neither  of 
conflicting  emotions — a  moment  how  abstracted  ! — have  had  time 
to  spring  up,  or  to  battle  for  indecorous  mastery. — We  have  seen 
a  landscape  of  a  justly  admired  neoteric,  in  which  he  aimed  at 
delineating  a  fiction,  one  of  the  most  severely  beautiful  in  anti- 
quity— the  gardens  of  the  Hesperides.     To  do  Mr. justice, 

he  had  painted  a  laudable  orchard,  with  fitting  seclusion,  and  a 
veritable  dragon  (of  which  a  Polypheme,  by  Poussin,  is  somehow 
a  fac-simile  for  the  situation),  looking  over  into  the  world,  shut 
out  backwards,  so  that  none  but  a  "  still-climbing  Hercules " 
could  hope  to  catch  a  peep  at  the  admired  Ternary  of  Recluses. 
No  conventual  porter  could  keep  his  eyes  better  than  this  custos 
with  the  "  lidless  eyes."  He  not  only  sees  that  none  do  intrude 
into  that  privacy,  but,  as  clear  as  daylight,  that  none  but  Hercules 
aut  Diaiolus  by  any  manner  of  means  can.  So  far  all  is  well. 
We  have  absolute  solitude  here  or  nowhere.  Ab  extra  the  dam- 
sels are  snug  enough.  But  here  the  artist's  courage  seems  to 
have  failed  him.  He  began  to  pity  his  pretty  charge,  and,  to  com- 
fort the  irksomeness,  has  peopled  their  solitude  with  a  bevy  of  fair 
attendants,  maids  of  honor,  or  ladies  of  the  bed-chamber,  accord- 
ing to  the  approved  etiquette  at  a  court  of  the  nineteenth  century  ; 
giving  to  the  whole  scene  the  air  of  a  fete  champetre,  if  we  will 
but  excuse  the  absence  of  the  gentlemen.  This  is  well,  and 
Watteauish.     But  what  is  become  of  the  solitary  mystery — the 

Daughters  three, 
That  sing  round  the  golden  tree  ? 

This  is  not  the  way  in  which  Poussin  would  have  treated  this 
subject. 

The  paintings,  or  rather  the  stupendous  architectural  designs, 
of  a  modern  artist,  have  been  urged  as  objections  to  the  theory  of 
our  motto.  They  are  of  a  character,  we  confess,  to  stagger  it. 
His  towered  structures  are  of  the  highest  order  of  the  material 


ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART.  103 

sublime.  Whether  they  were  dreams,  or  transcripts  of  some  elder 
workmanship — Assyrian  ruins  old — restored  by  this  mighty  art- 
ist, they  satisfy  our  most  stretched  and  craving  conceptions  of  the 
glories  of  the  antique  world.  It  is  a  pity  that  they  were  ever 
peopled.  On  that  side,  the  imagination  of  the  artist  halts,  and 
^  appears  defective.  Let  us  examine  the  point  of  the  story  in  the 
"  Belshazzar's  Feast."  We  will  introduce  it  by  an  apposite 
anecdote. 

The  court  historians  of  the  day  record,  that  at  the  first  dinner 
given  by  the  late  King  (then  Prince  Regent)  at  the  Pavilion,  the 
following  characteristic  frolic  was  played  off.  The  guests  were 
select  and  admiring ;  the  banquet  profuse  and  admirable ;  the 
lights  lustrous  and  oriental ;  the  eye  was  perfectly  dazzled  with 
the  display  of  plate,  among  which  the  great  gold  salt-cellar, 
brought  from  the  regalia  in  the  Tower  for  this  especial  purpose, 
itself  a  tower !  stood  conspicuous  for  its  magnitude.  And  now 
the  Rev.  *  *  *  *^  the  then  admired  court  Chaplain,  was  proceed- 
ing with  the  grace,  when,  at  a  signal  given,  the  lights  were  sud- 
denly overcast,  and  a  huge  transparency  was  discovered,  in 
gold  letters — 

"  Brighton — Earthquake — Swallow-up-alive  !" 

Imagine  the  confusion  of  the  guests ;  the  Georges  and  garters, 
jewels,  bracelets,  moulted  upon  the  occasion  !  The  fans  dropped, 
and  picked  up  the  next  morning  by  the  sly  court  pages  !  Mrs. 
Fitz-what's-her-name  fainting,  and  the  Countess  of  *  *  *  holding 
the  smelling-bottle,  till  the  good-humored  Prince  caused  harmony 
to  be  restored,  by  calling  in  fresh  candles,  and  declaring  that  the 
whole  was  nothing  but  a  pantomime  hoax,  got  up  by  the  ingenious 
Mr.  Farley,  of  Covent  Garden,  from  hints  which  his  Royal  High- 
ness himself  had  furnished  !  Then  imagine  the  infinite  applause 
that  followed,  the  mutual  rallyings,  the  declarations  that  "  they 
were  not  much  frightened,"  of  the  assembled  galaxy. 

The  point  of  time  in  the  picture  exactly  answers  to  the  appear- 
ance of  the  transparency  in  the  anecdote.  The  huddle,  the 
flutter,  the  bustle,  the  escape,  the  alarm,  and  the  mock  alarm ; 
the  prettinesses  heightened  by  consternation ;  the  courtier's  fear 
which  was  flattery ;  and  the  lady's  which  was  affectation ;  all 


104  ELI  A. 

that  we  may  conceive  to  have  taken  place  in  a  mob  of  Brighton 
courtiers,  sympathizing  with  the  well-acted  surprise  of  their  sove- 
reign ;  all  this,  and  no  more,  is  exhibited  by  the  well-dressed 
lords  and  ladies  in  the  Hall  of  Belus.  Just  this  sort  of  conster- 
nation we  have  seen  among  a  flock  of  disquieted  wild  geese  at  the 
report  only  of  a  gun  having  gone  off ! 

But  is  this  vulgar  fright,  this  mere  animal  anxiety  for  the  pre-* 
servation  of  their  persons, — such  as  we  have  witnessed  at  a  thea- 
tre, when  a  slight  alarm  of  fire  has  been  given — an  adequate 
exponent  of  a  supernatural  terror  ?  the  way  in  which  the  finger 
of  God,  writing  judgments,  would  have  been  met  by  the  withered 
conscience  ?  There  is  a  human  fear,  and  a  divine  fear.  The 
one  is  disturbed,  restless,  and  bent  upon  escape.  The  other  is 
bowed  down,  effortless,  passive.  When  the  spirit  appeared  before 
Eliphaz  in  the  visions  of  the  night,  and  the  hair  of  his  flesh  stood 
up,  was  it  in  the  thoughts  of  the  Temanite  to  ring  the  bell  of  his 
chamber,  or  to  call  up  the  servants  ?  But  let  us  see  in  the  text 
what  there  is  to  justify  all  this  huddle  of  vulgar  consternation. 
^  From  the  words  of  Daniel  it  appears  that  Belshazzar  had  made 
a  great  feast  to  a  thousand  of  his  lords,  and  drank  wine  before 
the  thousand.  The  gold  and  silver  vessels  are  gorgeously  enu- 
merated,  with  the  princes,  the  king's  concubines,  and  his  wives. 
Then  follows — 

"  In  the  same  hour  came  forth  fingers  of  a  man's  hand,  and 
wrote  over  against  the  candlestick  upon  the  plaster  of  the  wall 
of  the  king's  palace  ;  and  the  king  saw  the  part  of  the  hand  thai 
wrote.  Then  the  king^s  countenance  was  changed,  and  his 
thoughts  troubled  him,  so  that  the  joints  of  his  loins  were  loosen- 
ed, and  his  knees  smote  one  against  another." 

This  is  the  plain  text.  By  no  hint  can  it  be  otherwise  inferred 
but  that  the  appearance  was  solely  confined  to  the  fancy  of  Bel- 
shazzar, that  his  single  brain  was  troubled.  Not  a  word  is  spoken 
of  its  being  seen  by  any  else  there  present,  not  even  by  the  queen 
herself,  who  merely  undertakes  for  the  interpretation  of  the  phe- 
nomenon, as  related  to  her,  doubtless,  by  her  husband.  The 
lords  are  simply  said  to  be  astonished  ;  /.  e.,  at  the  trouble  and 
the  change  of  countenance  in  their  sovereign.  Even  the  prophet 
does  not  appear  to  have  seen  the  scroll,  which  the  king  saw.    He 


ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART.  105 

recals  it  only,  as  Joseph  did  the  Dream  to  the  King  of  Egypt. 
"  Then  was  the  part  of  the  hand  sent  from  him  [the  Lord],  and 
this  writing  was  written."     He  speaks  of  the  phantasm  as  past. 

Then  what  becomes  of  this  needless  multiplication  of  the  mira- 
cle ?  this  message  to  i.  royal  conscience,  singly  expressed — for  it 
was  said,  "  Thy  kingdom  is  divided," — simultaneously  impressed 
upon  the  fancies  of  a  thousand  courtiers,  who  were  implied  in  it 
neither  directly  nor  grammatically  ? 

But  admitting  the  artist's  own  version  of  the  story,  and  that  the 
sight  was  seen  also  by  the  thousand  courtiers — let  it  have  been 
visible  to  all  Babylon — as  the  knees  of  Belshazzar  were  shaken, 
and  his  countenance  troubled,  even  so  would  the  knees  of  every 
man  in  Babylon,  and  their  countenances,  as  of  an  individual  man, 
have  been  troubled ;  bowed,  bent  down,  so  would  they  have 
remained,  stupor-fixed,  with  no  thought  of  struggling  with  that 
inevitable  judgment. 

Not  all  that  is  optically  possible  to  be  seen,  is  to  be  shown  in 
every  picture.  The  eye  delightedly  dwells  upon  the  brilliant 
individualities  in  a  "  Marriage  at  Cana,"  by  Veronese,  or  Titian, 
to  the  very  texture  and  color  of  the  wedding-garments,  the  ring 
glittering  upon  the  bride's  finger,  the  metal  and  fashion  of  the 
wine-pots ;  for  at  such  seasons  there  is  leisure  and  luxury  to  be 
curious.  But  in  a  "  day  of  judgment,"  or  in  a  "  day  of  lesser 
horrors,  yet  divine,"  as  at  the  impious  feast  of  Belshazzar,  the 
eye  should  see,  as  the  actual  eye  of  an  agent  or  patient  in  the 
immediate  scene  would  see,  only  in  masses  and  indistinction. 
Not  only  the  female  attire  and  jewelry  exposed  to  the  critical  eye 
of  fashion,  as  minutely  as  the  dresses  in  a  Lady's  Magazine,  in 
the  criticized  picture, — but  perhaps  the  curiosities  of  anatomical 
science,  and  studied  diversities  of  posture,  in  the  falling  angels 
and  sinners  of  Michael  Angelo, — have  no  business  in  their  great 
subjects.     There  was  no  leisure  for  them. 

By  a  wise  falsification,  the  great  masters  of  painting  got  at 
their  true  conclusions ;  by  not  showing  the  actual  appearances, 
that  is,  all  that  was  to  be  seen  at  any  given  moment  by  an  indif- 
ferent eye,  but  only  what  the  eye  might  be  supposed  to  see  in  the 
doing  or  suffering  of  some  portentous  action.  Suppose  the  mo- 
ment of  the  swallowing  up  of  Pompeii.     There  they  were  to  be 


106  ELIA. 

seen — houses,  columns,  architectural  proportions,  differences  of 
public  and  private  buildings,  men  and  women  at  their  standing 
occupations,  the  diversified  thousand  postures,  attitudes,  dresses, 
in  some  confusion  truly,  but  physically  they  were  visible.  But 
what  eye  saw  them  at  that  eclipsing  moment,  which  reduces  con- 
fusion to  a  kind  of  unity,  and  when  the  senses  are  upturned  from 
their  proprieties,  when  sight  and  hearing  are  a  feeling  only  ?  A 
thousand  years  have  passed,  and  we  are  at  leisure  to  contemplate 
the  weaver  fixed  standing  at  his  shuttle,  the  baker  at  his  oven, 
and  to  turn  over  with  antiquarian  coolness  the  pots  and  pans  of 
Pompeii. 

♦'  Sun,  stand  thou  still  upon  Gibeon,  and  thou.  Moon,  in  the 
valley  of  Ajalon."  Who,  in  reading  this  magnificent  Hebraism, 
in  his  conception,  sees  aught  but  the  heroic  son  of  Nun,  with  the 
outstretched  arm,  and  the  greater  and  lesser  light  obsequious  ? 
Doubtless  there  were  to  be  seen  hill  and  dale,  and  chariots  and 
horsemen,  on  open  plain,  or  winding  by  secret  defiles,  and  all  the 
circumstances  and  stratagems  of  war.  But  whose  eyes  would 
have  been  conscious  of  this  array  at  the  interposition  of  the  syn- 
chronic miracle  ?  Yet  in  the  picture  of  this  subject  by  the  artist 
of  the  "  Belshazzar's  Feast" — no  ignoble  work  either — the  mar- 
shalling and  landscape  of  the  war  is  everything,  the  miracle 
sinks  into  an  anecdote  of  the  day  ;  and  the  eye  may  "  dart  through 
rank  and  file  traverse  "  for  some  minutes,  before  it  shall  discover, 
among  his  armed  followers,  which  is  Joshua  !  Not  modem  art 
alone,  but  ancient,  where  only  it  is  to  be  found  if  anywhere, 
can  be  detected  erring,  from  defect  of  this  imaginative  faculty. 
The  world  has  nothing  to  show  of  the  preternatural  in  painting, 
transcending  the  figure  of  Lazarus  bursting  his  grave-clothes,  in 
the  great  picture  at  Angerstein's.  It  seems  a  thing  between  two 
beings.  A  ghastly  horror  at  itself  struggles  with  newly-appre- 
hending gratitude  at  second  life  bestowed.  It  cannot  forget  that 
it  was  a  ghost.  It  has  hardly  felt  that  it  is  a  body.  It  has  to  tell 
of  the  world  of  spirits. — Was  it  from  a  feeling,  that  the  crowd  of 
half-impassioned  bystanders,  and  the  still  more  irrelevant  herd  of 
passers-by  at  a  distance,  who  have  not  heard,  or  but  faintly  have 
been  told  of  the  passing  miracle,  admirable  as  they  are  in  design 
und  hue — for  it  is  a  glorified  work — do  not  respond  adeouately  to 


ON  THE  I RODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART.  107 

the  action — that  the  single  figure  of  the  Lazarus  has  been  attri- 
buted to  Michael  Angelo,  and  the  mighty  Sebastian  unfairly- 
robbed  of  the  fame  of  tlie  greater  half  of  the  interest  ?  Now  that 
there  were  not  indifferent  passers-by  within  actual  scope  of  the 
eyes  of  those  present  at  the  miracle,  to  whom  the  sound  of  it  had 
but  faintly,  or  not  at  all,  reached,  it  would  be  hardihood  to  deny  ; 
but  would  they  see  them  ?  or  can  the  mind  in  the  conception  of 
it  admit  of  such  unconceming  objects ;  can  it  think  of  them  at  all  ? 
or  what  associating  league  to  the  imagination  can  there  be  between 
the  seers,  and  the  seers  not,  of  a  presential  miracle  ? 

Were  an  artist  to  paint  upon  demand  a  picture  of  a  Dryad,  we 
will  ask  whether,  in  the  present  low  state  of  expectation,  the  pa- 
tron would  not,  or  ought  not,  be  fully  satisfied  with  a  beautiful 
naked  figure  recumbent  under  wide-stretched  oaks  ?  Disseat  those 
woods,  and  place  the  same  figure  among  fountains,  and  fall  of 
pellucid  water,  and  you  have  a — Naiad  !  Not  so  in  a  rough  print 
we  have  seen  afler  Julio  Romano,  we  think — for  it  is  long  since — 
there,  by  no  process,  with  mere  change  of  scene,  could  the  figure 
have  reciprocated  characters.  Long,  grotesque,  fantastic,  yet 
with  a  grace  of  her  own,  beautiful  in  convolution  and  distortion, 
linked  to  her  connatural  tree,  co-twisting  with  its  limbs  her  own, 
till  both  seemed  either — these,  animated  branches ;  those,  disani- 
mated  members — yet  the  animal  and  vegetable  lives  sufficiently 
kept  distinct — his  Dryad  lay — an  approximation  of  two  natures, 
which  to  conceive,  it  must  be  seen ;  analogous  to,  not  the  same 
with,  the  delicacies  of  Ovidian  transformations. 

To  the  lowest  subjects,  and,  to  a  superficial  comprehension,  the 
most  barren,  the  Great  Masters  gave  loftiness  and  fruitfulness. 
The  large  eye  of  genius  saw  in  the  meanness  of  present  objects 
their  capabilities  of  treatment  from  their  relations  to  some  grand 
Past  or  Future.  How  has  Raphael — we  must  still  linger  about 
the  Vatican — treated  the  humble  craft  of  the  ship-builders,  in  his 
"  Building  of  the  Ark  ?"  It  is  in  that  scriptural  series,  to  which 
we  have  referred,  and  which,  judging  1  im  from  some  fine  rough, 
old  graphic  sketches  of  them  which  we  possess,  seem  to  be  of  a 
higher  and  more  poetic  grade  than  even  the  Cartoons.  The  dim 
of  sight  are  the  timid  and  the  shrinking.  There  is  a  cowardice 
in  modern  art.     As  the  Frenchman,  of  whom  Coleridge's  friend 


tOS  ■  ELIA. 

made  the  prophetio  guess  at  Rome,  from  the  beard  and  horns  of 
the  Moses  of  Michael  Angelo,  collected  no  inferences  beyond  that 
of  a  He  Goat  and  a  Cornuto ;  so  from  this  subject,  of  mere  me- 
chanic promise,  it  would  instinctively  turn  away,  as  from  one  in- 
capable of  investiture  with  any  grandeur.  The  dock-yards  at 
Woolwich  would  object  derogatory  associations.  The  depdt  at 
Chatham  would  be  the  mote  and  the  beam  in  its  intellectual  eye. 
But  not  to  the  nautical  preparations  in  the  ship-yards  of  Civita 
Vecchia  did  Raphael  look  for  instructions,  when  he  imagined  the 
Building  of  the  Vessel  that  was  to  be  conservatory  of  the  wrecks 
of  the  species  of  drowned  mankind.  In  the  intensity  of  the  ac- 
tion, he  keeps  ever  out  of  sight  the  meanness  of  the  operation. 
There  is  the  Patriarch,  in  calm  forethought,  and  with  holy  pre- 
science, giving  directions.  And  there  are  his  agents — ^the  solitary 
but  sufficient  Three — hewing,  sawing,  every  one  with  the  might 
and  earnestness  of  a  Demiurgus ;  under  some  instinctive  rather 
than  technical  guidance  !  giant-muscled  ;  every  one  a  Hercules, 
or  liker  to  those  Vulcanian  Three,  that  in  sounding  caverns  under 
Mongibello  wrought  in  fire — Brontes,  and  black  Steropes,  and 
Pyracmon.     So  work  the  workmen  that  should  repair  a  world! 

Artists  again  err  in  the  confounding  of  poetic  with  pictorial 
subjects.  In  the  latter,  the  exterior  accidents  are  nearly  every- 
thing, the  unseen  qualities  as  nothing.  Othello's  color — the 
infirmities  and  corpulence  of  a  Sir  John  Falstaff— do  they  haunt 
us  perpetually  in  the  reading  ?  or  are  they  obtruded  upon  our 
conceptions  one  time  for  ninety-nine  that  we  are  lost  in  admiration 
at  the  respective  moral  or  intellectual  attributes  of  the  character  ? 
But  in  a  picture  Othello  is  alicays  a  Blackamoor ;  and  the  other 
only  Plump  Jack.  Deeply  corporealised,  and  enchained  hope- 
lessly in  the  grovelling  fetters  of  externality,  must  be  the  mind, 
to  which,  in  its  better  moments,  the  image  of  the  high-souled, 
high-intelligenced  Quixote — the  errant  Star  of  Knighthood,  made 
more  tender  by  eclipse — has  never  presented  itself,  divested  from 
the  unhallowed  accompaniment  of  a  Sancho,  or  a  rabblement  at 
the  heels  of  Rosinante.  That  man  has  read  his  book  by  halves ; 
he  has  laughed,  mistaking  his  author's  purport,  which  was — tears. 
The  artist  that  pictures  Quixote  (and  it  is  in  this  degrading  point 
♦hat  he  is  every  season  held  up  at  our  Exhibitions)  in  the  shallow 


ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MOrERN  ART.      109 

hope  of  exciting  mirth,  would  have  joined  the  rabble  at  the  heels 
of  his  starved  steed.  We  wish  not  to  see  i/ta^  counterfeited,  which 
we  would  not  have  wished  to  see  in  the  reality.  Conscious  of  the 
heroic  inside  of  the  noble  Quixote,  who,  on  hearing  that  his 
withered  person  was  passing,  would  have  stepped  over  his  thresh- 
old  to  gaze  upon  his  forlorn  habiliments,  and  the  "  strange  bed- 
fellows which  misery  brings  a  man  acquainted  with?"  Shade  of 
Cervantes !  who  in  thy  Second  Part  could  put  into  the  mouth  of 
thy  Quixote  those  high  aspirations  of  a  super-chivalrous  gallantry, 
where  he  replies  to  one  of  the  shepherdesses,  apprehensive  that 
he  would  spoil  their  pretty  net-works,  and  inviting  him  to  be  a 
guest  with  them,  in  accents  like  these :  "  Truly,  fairest  Lady, 
Actseon  was  not  more  astonished  when  he  saw  Diana  bathing  her- 
self at  the  fountain,  than  I  have  been  in  beholding  your  beauty ; 
I  commend  the  manner  of  your  pastime,  and  thank  you  for  your 
kind  offers  ;  and,  if  I  may  serve  you,  so  I  may  be  sure  you  will 
be  obeyed,  you  may  command  me :  for  my  profession  is  this.  To 
show  myself  thankful,  and  a  doer  of  good  to  all  sorts  of  people, 
especially  of  the  rank  that  your  person  shows  you  to  be ;  and  if 
those  nets,  as  they  take  up  but  a  little  piece  of  ground,  should 
take  up  the  whole  world,  I  would  seek  out  new  worlds  to  pass 
through,  rather  than  break  them  :  and  (he  adds)  that  you  may 
give  credit  to  this  my  exaggeration,  behold  at  least  he  that  pro- 
miseth  you  this,  is  Don  Quixote  de  la  Mancha,  if  haply  this  name 
hath  come  to  your  hearing."  Illustrious  Romancer!  were  the 
'•  fine  frenzies,"  which  possessed  the  brain  of  thy  own  Quixote,  a 
fit  subject,  as  in  this  Second  Part,  to  be  exposed  to  the  jeers  of 
Duennas  and  Serving  Men  ?  to  be  monstered,  and  shown  up  at 
the  heartless  banquets  of  great  men?  Was  that  pitiable  infirmity, 
which  in  thy  First  Part  misleads  him,  always  from  within,  into  half- 
ludicrous,  but  more  than  half-compassionablc  and  admirable 
errors,  not  infliction  enough  from  heaven,  that  men  by  studied 
artifices  must  devise  and  practise  upon  the  humor,  to  inflame 
where  they  should  soothe  it  ?  Why,  Goneril  would  have  blushed 
to  practise  upon  the  abdicated  king  at  this  rate,  and  the  she- wolf 
Regan  not  have  endured  to  play  the  pranks  upon  h-«  fled  wits, 


110  ELIA. 

which  thou  hast  made  thy  Quixote  suffer  in  Duchesses'  halls, 
and  at  the  hands  of  that  unworthy  nobleman.* 

In  the  First  Adventures,  even,  it  needed  all  the  art  of  the  most 
consummate  artist  in  the  Book  way  that  the  world  hath  yet  seen, 
to  keep  up  in  the  mind  of  the  reader  the  heroic  attributes  of  the 
character  without  relaxing ;  so  as  absolutely  that  they  shall  suffer 
no  alloy  from  the  debasing  fellowship  of  the  clown.  If  it  ever 
obtrudes  itself  as  a  disharmony,  are  we  inclined  to  laugh ;  or 
not,  rather,  to  indulge  a  contrary  emotion  ? — Cervantes,  stung, 
perchance,  by  the  relish  with  which  his  Reading  Public  had  re- 
ceived the  fooleries  of  the  man,  more  to  their  palates  than  the 
generosities  of  the  master,  in  the  sequel  let  his  pen  run  riot,  lost 
the  harmony  and  the  balance,  and  sacrificed  a  great  idea  to  the 
taste  of  his  contemporaries.  We  know  that  in  the  present  day 
the  Knight  has  fewer  admirers  than  the  Squire.  Anticipating, 
what  did  actually  happen  to  him — as  afterwards  it  did  to  his 
scarce  inferior  follower,  the  Author  of  "  Guzman  de  Alfarache" 
— ^that  some  less  knowing  hand  would  prevent  him  by  a  spurious 
Second  Part ;  and  judging  that  it  would  be  easier  for  his  com- 
petitor to  out-bid  him  in  the  comicalities,  than  in  the  romance,  of 
his  work,  he  abandoned  his  Knight,  and  has  fairly  set  up  the 
Squire  for  his  Hero.  For  what  else  has  he  unsealed  the  eyes  of 
Sancho  ?  and  instead  of  that  twilight  state  of  semi-insanity — the 
madness  at  second  hand — the  contagion,  caught  from  a  stronger 
mind  infected — that  war  between  native  cunning,  and  hereditary 
deference,  with  which  he  has  hitherto  accompanied  his  master — 
two  for  a  pair  almost — does  he  substitute  a  downright  Knave,  with 
open  eyes,  for  his  own  ends  only  following  a  confessed  Madman ; 
and  offering  at  one  time  to  lay,  if  not  actually  laying,  hands 
upon  him !  From  the  moment  that  Sancho  loses  his  reverence, 
Don  Quixote  is  become — a  treatable  lunatic.  Our  artists  handle 
him  accordingly. 

•  Yet  from  this  Second  Part,  our  cried-up  pictures  ure  mostly  selected  ; 
the  waiting-women  with  beards,  &c. 


THE  WEDDING.  m 


THE  WEDDING 


I  DO  not  know  when  I  have  been  better  pleased  than  at  being  in- 
vited  last  week  to  be  present  at  the  wedding  of  a  friend's  daugh- 
ter.  I  like  to  make  one  at  these  ceremonies,  which  to  us  old 
people  give  back  our  youth  in  a  manner,  and  restore  our  gayest 
season,  in  the  remembrance  of  our  own  success,  or  the  regrets, 
scarcely  less  tender,  of  our  own  youthful  disappointments,  in  this 
point  of  a  settlement.  On  these  occasions  I  am  sure  to  be  in 
good-humor  for  a  week  or  two  after,  and  enjoy  a  reflected  honey- 
moon. Being  without  a  family,  I  am  flattered  with  these  tem- 
porary adoptions  into  a  friend's  family ;  I  feel  a  sort  of  cousin- 
hood,  or  uncleship,  for  the  season ;  I  am  inducted  into  degrees 
of  affinity  ;  and,  in  the  participated  socialities  of  the  little  com- 
munity, I  lay  down  for  a  brief  while  my  solitary  bachelorship. 
I  carry  this  humor  so  far,  that  I  take  it  unkindly  to  be  left  out, 
even  when  a  funeral  is  going  on  in  the  house  of  a  dear  friend. 

But  to  my  subject. 

The  union  itself  had  been  long  settled,  but  its  celebration  had 
been  hitherto  deferred,  to  an  almost  unreasonable  state  of  sus- 
pense in  the  lovers,  by  some  invincible  prejudices  which  the 
bride's  father  had  unhappily  contracted  upon  the  subject  of  the 
too  early  marriages  of  females.  He  has  been  lecturing  any 
time  these  five  years — for  to  that  length  the  courtship  has  been 
protracted — upon  the  propriety  of  putting  off*  the  solemnity,  till 
the  lady  should  have  completed  her  five-and-twentieth  year.  We 
all  began  to  be  afraid  that  a  suit,  which  as  yet  had  abated  of  none 
of  its  ardors,  might  at  last  be  lingered  on,  till  passion  had  time  to 
cool,  and  love  go  out  in  the  experiment.  But  a  little  wheedling 
on  the  part  of  his  wife,  who  was  by  no  means  a  party  to  these 


1J2  ELI  A. 

overstrained  notions,  joined  to  some  serious  expostulations  on  tnai 
of  his  friends,  who,  from  the  growing  infirmities  of  the  old  gen- 
tleman, could  not  promise  ourselves  many  years'  enjoyment  of 
his  company,  and  were  anxious  to  bring  matters  to  a  conclusion 
during  his  lifetime,  at  length  prevailed ;  and  on  Monday  last  the 

daughter  of  my  old  friend.  Admiral ,  having  attained  the 

womanly  age  of  nineteen,  was  conducted  to  the  church  by  her 

pleasant  cousin  J ,  who  told  some  few  years  older. 

Before  the  youthful  part  of  my  female  readers  express  their  in- 
dignation at  the  abominable  loss  of  time  occasioned  to  the  lovers 
by  the  preposterous  notions  of  my  old  friend,  they  will  do  well  to 
consider  the  reluctance  which  a  fond  parent  naturally  feels  at 
parting  with  his  child.  To  this  unwillingness,  I  believe,  in  most 
cases  may  be  traced  the  difference  of  opinion  on  this  point 
between  child  and  parent,  whatever  pretences  of  interest  or  pru- 
dence may  be  held  out  to  cover  it.  The  hard-heartedness  of 
fathers  is  a  fine  theme  for  romance  writers,  a  sure  and  moving 
topic ;  but  is  there  not  something  untender,  to  say  no  more  of  it, 
in  the  hurry  which  a  beloved  child  is  sometimes  in  to  tear  herself 
from  the  paternal  stock,  and  commit  herself  to  strange  graftings  ? 
The  case  is  heightened  where  the  lady,  as  in  the  present  instance, 
happens  to  be  an  only  child.  I  do  not  understand  these  matters 
experimentally,  but  I  can  make  a  shrewd  guess  at  the  wounded 
pride  of  a  parent  upon  these  occasions.  It  is  no  new  observa- 
tion, I  believe,  that  a  lover  in  most  cases  has  no  rival  so  much 
to  be  feared  as  the  father.  Certainly  there  is  a  jealousy  in  un- 
parallel  subjects,  which  is  little  less  heart-rending  than  the  pas- 
sion which  we  more  strictly  christen  by  that  name.  Mothers' 
scruples  are  more  easily  got  over  ;  for  this  reason,  I  suppose,  that 
the  protection  transferred  to  a  husband  is  less  a  derogation  and  a 
loss  to  their  authority  than  to  the  paternal.  Mothers,  besides, 
have  a  trembling  foresight,  which  paints  the  inconveniences  (im- 
possible to  be  conceived  in  the  same  degree  by  the  other  parent) 
of  a  life  of  forlorn  celibacy,  which  the  refusal  of  a  tolerable 
match  may  entail  upon  their  child.  Mothers'  instinct  is  a  surer 
guide  here,  than  the  cold  reasonings  of  a  father  on  such  a  topic. 
To  this  instinct  may  be  imputed,  and  by  it  alone  may  be  excused, 
the  unbeseeming  artifices,  by  which  some  wives  push  on  the 


THE  WEDDING.  113 


matrimonial  projects  of  their  daughters,  which  the  husband,  how- 
ever approving,  shall  entertain  with  comparative  indifference. 
A  little  shamelessness  on  this  head  is  pardonable.  With  this  ex- 
planation, forwardness  becomes  a  grace,  and  maternal  impoitu- 
nity  receives  the  name  of  a  virtue. — But  the  parson  stays,  while 
I  preposterously  assume  his  office  ;  I  am  preaching,  while  the 
bride  is  on  the  threshold. 

Nor  let  any  of  my  female  readers  suppose  that  the  sage  reflec- 
tions which  have  just  escaped  me  have  the  obliquest  tendency  of 
application  to  the  young  lady,  who,  it  will  be  seen,  is  about  to 
venture  upon  a  change  in  her  condition,  at  a  mature  and  compe- 
tent age,  and  not  without  the  fullest  approbation  of  all  parties.  I 
only  deprecate  very  hasty  marriages. 

It  had  been  fixed  that  the  ceremony  should  be  gone  through  at 
an  early  hour,  to  give  time  for  a  little  dejeune  afterwards,  to  which 
a  select  party  of  friends  had  been  invited.  We  were  in  church 
a  little  before  the  clock  struck  eight. 

Nothing  could  be  more  judicious  or  graceful  than  the  dress  of 
the  bride-maids — the  three  charming  Miss  Foresters — on  this 
morning.  To  give  the  bride  an  opportunity  of  shining  singly, 
they  had  come  habited  all  in  green.  I  am  ill  at  describing  female 
apparel ;  but  while  she  stood  at  the  altar  in  vestments  white  and 
candid  as  her  thoughts,  a  sacrificial  whiteness,  they  assisted  in 
robes,  such  as  might  become  Diana's  nymphs — Foresters  indeed 
— as  such  who  had  not  yet  come  to  the  resolution  of  putting  off 
cold  virginity.  These  young  maids,  not  being  so  blest  as  to  have 
a  mother  living,  I  am  told,  keep  single  for  their  father's  sake,  and 
live  all  together  so  happy  with  their  remaining  parent,  that  the 
hearts  of  their  lovers  are  ever  broken  with  the  prospect  (so  in- 
auspicious to  their  hopes)  of  such  uninterrupted  and  provoking 
home-comfort.  Gallant  girls !  each  a  victim  worthy  of  Iphige- 
nia ! 

I  do  not  know  what  business  I  have  to  be  present  in  solemn 
places.  I  cannot  divest  me  of  an  unseasonable  disposition  to 
levity  upon  the  most  awful  occasions.  I  was  never  cut  out  for  a 
public  functionary.  Ceremony  and  I  have  long  shaken  hands ; 
but  I  could  not  resist  the  importunities  of  the  young  lady's  father, 
whose  gout  unhappily  confined  him  at  home,  to  act  as  parent  on 

PART    II.  9 


114  ELIA. 

this  occasion,  and  give  away  the  bride.  Something  ludicrous  oc- 
curred to  me  at  this  most  serious  of  all  moments — a  sense  of  my 
unfitness  to  have  the  disposal,  even  in  imagination,  of  the  sweet 
young  creature  beside  me.  I  fear  I  was  betrayed  to  some  lightness, 
for  the  awful  eye  of  the  parson — and  the  rector's  eye  of  Saint  Mil- 
dred's in  the  Poultry  is  no  trifle  of  a  rebuke — was  upon  me  in  an 
instant,  souring  my  incipient  jest  to  the  tristful  severities  of  a  fu- 
neral. 

This  was  the  only  misbehavior  which  I  can  plead  to  upon  this 
solemn  occasion,  unless  what  was  objected  to  me  after  the  cere- 
mony, by  one  of  the  handsome  Miss  T s,  be  accounted  a  sole- 
cism. She  was  pleased  to  say  that  she  had  never  seen  a  gentle- 
man before  me  give  away  a  bride,  in  black.  Now  black  has 
been  my  ordinary  apparel  so  long — indeed  I  take  it  to  be  the 
proper  costume  of  an  author — the  stage  sanctions  it — ^that  to  have 
appeared  in  some  lighter  color  would  have  raised  more  mirth  at 
my  expense,  than  the  anomaly  had  created  censure.  But  I  could 
perceive  that  the  bride's  mother,  and  some  elderly  ladies  present 
(God  bless  them  !)  would  have  been  well  content,  if  I  had  come 
in  any  other  color  than  that.  But  I  got  over  the  omen  by  a  lucky 
apologue,  which  I  remembered  out  of  Pilpay,  or  some  Indian 
author,  of  all  the  birds  being  invited  to  the  linnet's  wedding,  at 
which,  when  all  the  rest  came  in  their  gayest  feathers,  the  raven 
alone  apologized  for  his  cloak  because  "  he  had  no  other."  This 
tolerably  reconciled  the  elders.  But  with  the  young  people  all 
was  merriment,  and  shaking  of  hands,  and  congratulations,  and 
kissing  away  the  bride's  tears,  and  kissing  from  her  in  return, 
till  a  young  lady,  who  assumed  some  experience  in  these  matters, 
having  worn  the  nuptial  bands  some  four  or  five  weeks  longer 
than  her  friend,  rescued  her,  archly  observing,  with  half  an  eye 
upon  the  bridegroom,  that  at  this  rate  she  would  have  "  none 
left." 

My  friend  the  admiral  was  in  fine  wig  and  buckle  on  this  occa- 
sion— a  striking  contrast  to  his  usual  neglect  of  personal  appear- 
ance. He  did  not  once  shove  up  his  borrowed  locks  (his  custom 
ever  at  his  morning  studies)  to  betray  the  few  grey  stragglers  of 
his  own  beneath  them.  He  wore  an  aspect  of  thoughtful  satis- 
faction.    I  trembled  for  the  hour,  which  at  length  approached, 


i 


THE  WEDDING.  115 


when  after  a  protracted  breakfast  of  three  hours — if  stores  of  cold 
fowls,  tongues,  hams,  botargoes,  dried  fruits,  wines,  cordials,  &c., 
can  deserve  so  meagre  an  appellation — the  coach  was  announced, 
which  was  come  to  carry  off  the  bride  and  bridegroom  for  a  sea- 
son, as  custom  has  sensibly  ordained,  into  the  country  j  upon 
which  design,  wishing  them  a  felicitous  journey,  let  us  return  to 
the  assembled  guests. 

As  when  a  well-graced  actor  leaves  the  stage, 

The  eyes  of  men 

Are  idly  bent  on  him  that  enters  next, 

so  idly  did  we  bend  our  eyes  upon  one  another,  when  the  chief 
performers  in  the  morning's  pageant  had  vanished.  None  told 
his  tale.  None  sipped  her  glass.  The  poor  Admiral  made  an 
effort — it  was  not  much.  I  had  anticipated  so  far.  Even  the 
infinity  of  full  satisfaction,  that  had  betrayed  itself  through  the 
prim  looks  and  quiet  deportment  of  his  lady,  began  to  wane  into 
something  of  misgiving.  No  one  knew  whether  to  take  their 
leaves  or  stay.  We  seemed  assembled  upon  a  silly  occasion.  In 
this  crisis,  betwixt  tarrying  and  departure,  I  must  do  justice  to  a 
foolish  talent  of  mine,  which  had  otherwise  like  to  have  brought 
me  into  disgrace  in  the  fore-part  of  the  day  ;  I  mean  a  power,  in 
any  emergeney,  of  thinking  and  giving  vent  to  all  manner  of 
strange  nonsense.  In  this  awkward  dilemma  I  found  it  sovereign. 
I  rattled  off  some  of  my  most  excellent  absurdities.  All  were 
willing  to  be  relieved,  at  any  expense  of  reason,  from  the  pres- 
sure of  the  intolerable  vacuum  which  had  succeeded  to  the  morn- 
ing bustle.  By  this  means  I  was  fortunate  in  keeping  together 
the  better  part  of  the  company  to  a  late  hour  ;  and  a  rubber  of 
whist  (the  Admiral's  favorite  game)  with  some  rare  strokes  of 
chance  as  well  as  skill,  which  came  opportunely  on  his  side — 
lengthened  out  till  midnight — dismissed  the  old  gentleman  at  last 
to  his  bed  with  comparatively  easy  spirits. 

I  have  been  at  my  old  friend's  various  times  since.  I  do  not 
know  a  visiting  place  where  every  guest  is  so  perfectly  at  his 
ease ;  nowhere,  where  harmony  is  so  strangely  the  result  of  con- 
fusion. Everybody  is  at  cross-purposes,  yet  the  effect  is  so  much 
better  than  uniformity.     Contradictory  orders ;  servants  pulling 


116  ELI  A. 

one  way ;  master  and  mistress  driving  some  other,  yet  both  di- 
verse ;  visitors  huddled  up  in  corners ;  chairs  unsymmetrised ; 
candles  disposed  by  chance  ;  meals  at  odd  hours,  tea  and  supper 
at  once,  or  the  ktter  preceding  the  former ;  the  hoot  and  the  guest 
conferring,  yet  each  upon  a  different  topic,  each  understanding 
himself,  neither  trying  to  understand  or  hear  the  other  ;  draughts 
and  politics,  chess  and  political  economy,  cards  and  conversation 
on  nautical  matters,  going  on  at  once,  without  the  hope,  or  indeed 
the  wish,  of  distinguishing  them,  make  it  altogether  the  most  per- 
fect Concordia  discors  you  shall  meet  with.  Yet  somehow  the  old 
house  is  not  quite  what  it  should  be.  The  Admiral  still  enjoys 
his  pipe,  but  he  has  no  Miss  Emily  to  fill  it  for  him.  The  instru- 
ment stands  where  it  stood,  but  she  is  gone,  whose  delicate  touch 
could  sometimes  for  a  short  minute  appease  the  warring  elements. 
He  has  learnt,  as  Marvel  expresses  it,  to  "  make  his  destiny  his 
choice."  He  bears  bravely  up,  but  he  does  not  come  out  with 
his  flashes  of  wild  wit  so  thick  as  formerly.  His  sea  songs  seldom 
escape  him.  His  wife,,  too,  looks  as  if  she  wanted  some  younger 
body  to  scold  and  set  to  rights.  We  all  miss  a  junior  presence. 
It  is  wonderful  how  one  young  maiden  freshens  up,  and  keeps 
green,  the  paternal  roof.  Old  and  young  seem  to  have  an  inte- 
rest in  her,  so  long  as  she  is  not  absolutely  disposed  of.  The 
youthfulness  of  the  house  is  flown.     Emily  is  married. 


REJOICINGS  UPON  THE  NEW  YEAR'S  COMING  OF  AGE.    117 


REJOICINGS  UPON  THE  NEW  YEAR'S  COMING  OF  AGE. 


The  Old  Year  being  dead,  and  the  New  Year  coming  of  age, 
which  he  does,  by  Calendar  Law,  as  soon  as  the  breath  is  out  of 
the  old  gentleman's  body,  nothing  would  serve  the  young  spark 
but  he  must  give  a  dinner  upon  the  occasion,  to  which  all  the 
Bays  in  the  year  were  invited.  The  Festivals,  whom  he  deputed 
as  his  stewards,  were  mightily  taken  with  the  notion.  They  had 
been  engaged  time  out  of  mind,  they  said,  in  providing  mirth  and 
good  cheer  for  mortals  below ;  and  it  was  time  they  should  have 
a  taste  of  their  own  bounty.  It  was  stiffly  debated  among  them, 
whether  the  Fasts  should  be  admitted.  Some  said,  the  appear- 
ance, of  such  lean,  starved  guests,  with  their  mortified  faces, 
would  pervert  the  ends  of  the  meeting.  But  the  objection  was 
over-ruled  by  Christmas  Day,  who  had  a  design  upon  Ash  Wed- 
nesday (as  you  shall  hear),  and  a  mighty  desire  to  see  how  the 
old  Domine  would  behave  himself  in  his  cups.  Only  the  Vigila 
were  requested  to  come  with  their  lanterns,  to  light  the  gentlefolks 
home  at  night. 

All  the  Bays  came  to  their  day.  Covers  were  provided  for 
three  hundred  and  sixty-five  guests  at  the  principal  table  ;  with 
an  occasional  knife  and  fork  at  the  side-board  for  the  TweiUy- 
Ninth  of  February. 

I  should  have  told  yoi ,  that  cards  of  invitation  had  been  issued. 
The  carriers  were  the  Hours;  twelve  little,  merry,  whirligig 
foot-pages,  as  you  should  desire  to  see,  that  went  all  round,  and 
found  out  the  persons  invited  well  enough,  with  the  exception 
of  Easter  Bay,  Shrove  Tuesday,  and  a  few  such  Moveables,  who 
had  lately  shifted  their  quarters. 

Well,  they  all  met  at  last,  foul  Bays,  fine  Bays,  all  sorts  of 


118  ELIA. 

Days,  and  a  rare  din  they  made  of  it.  There  was  nothing  but, 
Hail !  fellow  Day, — well  met — brother  Day — sister  Day — only 
Lady  Day  kept  a  little  on  the  aloof,  and  seemed  somewhat  scorn- 
ful. Yet  some  said,  Twelfth  Day  cut  her  out  and  out,  for  she 
came  in  a  tiffany  suit,  white  and  gold,  like  a  green  on  a  frost- 
cake,  all  royal,  glittering,  and  Epiphanous.  The  rest  came, 
some  in  green,  some  in  white — but  old  Lent  and  his  family  were 
not  yet  out  of  mourning.  Rainy  Days  came  in,  dripping  ;  and 
sun-shiny  Days  helped  them  to  change  their  stockings.  Wedding 
Day  was  there  in  his  marriage  finery,  a  little  the  worse  for  wear. 
Pay  Day  came  late,  as  he  always  does ;  and  Doomsday  sent  word 
— he  might  be  expected. 

April  Fool  (as  my  young  lord's  jester)  took  upon  himself  to 
marshal  the  guests,  and  wild  work  he  made  with  it.  It  would 
have  posed  old  Erra  Pater  to  have  found  out  any  given  Day  in  the 
year,  to  erect  a  scheme  upon — good  Days,  bad  Days,  were  so 
shuffled  together,  to  the  confounding  of  all  sober  horoscopy. 

He  had  stuck  the  Twenty-First  of  June  next  to  the  Twenty- 
Second  of  December,  and  the  former  looked  like  a  Maypole  siding 
a  marrow-bone.  Ash  Wednesday  got  wedged  in  (as  was  con- 
certed) betwixt  Christmas  and  Lord  Mayor^s  Day.  Lord !  how 
he  laid  about  him !  Nothing  but  barons  of  beef  and  turkeys 
would  go  down  with  him — ^to  the  great  greasing  and  detriment  of 
his  new  sackcloth  bib  and  tucker.  And  still  Christmas  Day  was 
at  his  elbow,  plying  him  with  the  wassail-bowl,  till  he  roared,  and 
hiccupp'd,  and  protested  there  was  no  faith  in  dried  ling,  but 
commended  it  to  the  devil  for  a  sour,  windy,  acrimonious,  censo- 
rious, hy-pocrit-crit-critical  mess,  and  no  dish  for  a  gentleman. 
Then  he  dipt  his  fist  into  the  middle  of  the  great  custard  that 
stood  before  his  left-hand  neighbor,  and  daubed  his  hungry  beard 
all  over  with  it,  till  you  would  have  taken  him  for  the  Last  Day 
in  December,  it  so  hung  in  icicles. 

At  another  part  of  the  table,  Shrove  Tuesday  was  helping  the 
Second  of  September  to  some  cock  broth, — which  courtesy  the 
latter  returned  with  the  delicate  thigh  of  a  hen  pheasant — so  there 
was  no  love  lost  for  that  matter.  The  Last  of  Lent  was  sponging 
upon  Shrovetide's  pancake ;  which  April  Fool  perceiving,  told 
him  he  did  well,  pancakes  were  proper  to  a  goodfry-day. 


REJOICING  UPON  THE  NEW  YEAR'S  COMING  OF  AGE.     119 

In  another  part,  a  hubbub  arose  about  the  Thirtieth  of  January ^ 
who,  it  seems,  being  a  sour  puritanic  character,  that  thought  no- 
body's meat  good  or  sanctified  enough  for  him,  had  smuggled  into 
the  room  a  calf's  head,  which  he  had  had  cooked  at  home  for  that 
purpose,  thinking  to  feast  thereon  incontinently  ;  but  as  it  lay  in 
the  dish  March  Many  weather  s,  who  is  a  very  fine  lady,  and 
subject  to  the  meagrims,  screamed  out  there  was  a  "  human  head 
in  the  platter,"  and  raved  about  Herodias'  daughter  to  that  degree, 
that  the  obnoxious  viand  was  obliged  to  be  removed  ;  nor  did  she 
recover  her  stomach  till  she  had  gulped  down  a  Restorative, 
confected  of  Oak  Apple,  which  the  merry  Twenty-Ninth  of  May 
always  carries  about  with  him  for  that  purpose. 

The  King's  health*  being  called  for  after  this,  a  notable  dispute 
arose  between  the  Twelfth  of  August  (a  zealous  old  Whig  gentle- 
woman), and  the  Twenty-Third  of  April  (a  new-fangled  lady 
of  the  Tory  stamp),  as  to  which  of  them  should  have  the  honor  to 
propose  it.  August  grew  hot  upon  the  matter,  affirming  time  out 
of  mind  the  prescriptive  right  to  have  lain  with  her,  till  her  rival 
had  basely  supplanted  her  ;  whom  she  represented  as  little  better 
than  a  kept  mistress,  who  went  about  in  Jine  clothes,  while  she 
(the  legitimate  Birthday)  had  scarcely  a  rag,  &c. 

April  Fool,  being  made  mediator,  confirmed  the  right  in  the 
strongest  form  of  words  to  the  appellant,  but  decided  for  peace' 
sake  that  the  exercise  of  it  should  remain  with  the  present  posses 
sor.     At  the  same  time,  he  slily  rounded  the  first  lady  in  the  ear, 
that  an  action  might  lie  against  the  Crown  for  bi-geny. 

It  beginning  to  grow  a  little  duskish,  Candlemas  lustily  bawled 
out  for  lights,  which  was  opposed  by  all  the  Days,  who  protested 
against  burning  daylight.  Then  fair  water  was  handed  round  in 
silver  ewers,  and  the  same  lady  was  observed  to  take  an  unusual 
time  in  Washing  herself. 

May  Day,  with  that  sweetness  which  is  peculiar  to  her,  in  a 
neat  speech  proposing  the  health  of  the  founder,  crowned  her 
goblet  (and  by  her  example  the  rest  of  the  company)  with  gar- 
lands. This  being  done,  the  lordly  New  Year  from  the  upper 
end  of  the  table,  in  a  cordial  but  somewhat  lofty  tone,  returned 

*  King  George  IV.     . 


120  ELIA. 

thanks.  He  felt  proud  on  an  occasion  of  meeting  so  many  of  his 
worthy  father's  late  tenants,  promised  to  improve  their  farms,  and 
at  the  same  time  to  abate  (if  anything  was  found  unreasonable)  in 
their  rents. 

At  the  mention  of  this,  the  four  Quarter  Days  involuntarily 
looked  at  each  other,  and  smiled  ;  April  Fool  whistled  to  an  old 
tune  of  "  New  Brooms  ;"  and  a  surly  old  rebel  at  the  further  end 
of  the  table  (who  was  discovered  to  be  no  other  than  the  Fifth  of 
November)  muttered  out,  distinctly  enough  to  be  heard  by  the 
whole  company,  words  to  this  effect,  that,  "  when  the  old  one  is 
gone,  he  is  a  fool  that  looks  for  a  better."  Which  rudeness  of 
his,  the  guests  resenting,  unanimously  voted  his  expulsion ;  and 
the  malcontent  was  thrust  out  neck  and  heels  into  the  cellar,  as 
the  properest  place  for  such  a  boutefeu  and  firebrand  as  he  had 
shown  himself  to  be. 

Order  being  restored — the  young  lord  (who,  to  say  truth,  had 
been  a  little  ruffled,  and  put  beside  his  oratory)  in  as  few,  and  yet 
as  obliging  words  as  possible,  assured  them  of  entire  welcome ; 
and,  with  a  graceful  turn,  singling  out  poor  Twenty-Ninth  of 
Febmary,  that  had  sate  all  this  while  mumchance  at  the  side- 
board, begged  to  couple  his  health  with  that  of  the  good  company 
before  him — which  he  drank  accordingly  ;  observing,  that  he  had 
not  seen  his  honest  face  any  time  these  four  years — with  a  num- 
ber of  endearing  expressions  besides.  At  the  same  time,  remov- 
ing the  solitary  Day  from  the  forlorn  seat  which  had  been 
assigned  him,  he  stationed  him  at  his  own  board,  somewhere 
between  the  Greek  Calends  and  Latter  Lammas. 

Ash  Wednesday,  being  now  called  upon  for  a  song,  with  bis 
eyes  fast  stuck  in  his  head,  and  as  well  as  the  Canary  he  had 
swallowed  would  give  him  leave,  struck  up  a  Carol,  which  Christ- 
mas Day  had  taught  him  for  the  nonce  ;  and  was  followed  by  the 
latter,  who  gave  "  Miserere  "  in  fine  style,  hitting  off  the  mump- 
ing notes  and  lengthened  drawl  of  Old  Mortification  with  infinite 
humor.  April  Fool  swore  they  had  exchanged  conditions ;  but 
Good  Friday  was  observed  to  look  extremely  grave  ;  and  Sunday 
held  her  fan  before  her  face,  that  she  might  not  be  seen  to 
smile. 


REJOICINGS  U5ON  THE  x\^EW  YEAR'S  COMING  OF  AGE.     121 

Shrove-tide,  Lord  Mayor's  Day,  and  April  Fool,  next  joined  in 
a  glee — 

Which  is  the  properest  day  to  drink  ? 

in  which  all  the  Days  chiming  in,  made  a  merry  burden. 

They  next  fell  to  quibbles  and  conundrums.  The  question 
being  proposed,  who  had  the  greatest  number  of  followers — the 
Quarter  Days  said,  there  could  be  no  question  as  to  that ;  for  they 
had  all  the  creditors  in  the  world  dogging  their  heels.  But  April 
Fool  gave  it  in  favor  of  the  Forty  Days  before  Easter  ;  because 
the  debtors  in  all  cases  outnumbered  the  creditors,  and  they  kept 
lent  all  the  year. 

All  this  while  Valentine's  Day  kept  courting  pretty  May,  who 
sate  next  him,  slipping  amorous  billets-doux  under  the  table,  till 
the  Dog  Days  (who  are  naturally  of  a  warm  constitution)  began 
to  be  jealous,  and  to  bark  and  rage  exceedingly.  April  Fool,  who 
likes  a  bit  of  sport  above  measure,  and  had  some  pretensions  to 
the  lady  besides,  as  being  but  a  cousin  once  removed, — clapped 
and  halloo'd  them  on ;  and  as  fast  as  their  indignation  cooled, 
those  mad  wags,  the  Ember  Days,  were  at  it  with  their  bellows, 
to  blow  it  into  a  flame  ;  and  all  was  in  a  ferment :  till  old  Madam 
Septuagesima  (who  boasts  herself  the  Mother  of  the  Days)  wisely 
diverted  the  conversation  with  a  tedious  tale  of  the  lovers  which 
she  could  reckon  when  she  was  young  ;  and  of  one  Master  Roga- 
tion Day  in  particular,  who  was  for  ever  putting  the  question  to 
her  ;  but  she  kept  him  at  a  distance,  as  the  chronicle  would  tell — 
by  which  I  apprehend  she  meant  the  Almanack.  Then  she  ram- 
bled on  to  the  Days  that  were  gone,  the  good  old  Days,  and  so  to 
the  Days  before  the  Flood — which  plainly  showed  her  old  head  to 
be  little  better  than  crazed  and  doited. 

Day  being  ended,  the  Days  called  for  their  cloaks  and  great- 
coats, and  took  their  leaves.  Lord  Mayor's  Day  went  off  in  a 
Mist,  as  usual ;  Shortest  Day  Jin  a  deep  black  Fog,  that  wrapt  the 
little  gentleman  all  round  like  a  hedge-hog.  Two  Vigils — so 
watchmen  are  called  in  heaven — saw  Christmas  Day  safe  home — 
they  had  been  used  to  the  business  before.  Another  Vigil — a 
Btout,  sturdy  patrole,  called  the  Eve  of  St,  Christopher — seeing 


122  ELIA 

Ash  Wednesday  in  a  condition  little  better  than  he  should  be — e'en 
whipt  him  over  his  shoulders,  pick-a-back  fashion,  and  Old  Mor- 
tification went  floating  home  singing — 

On  the  bat's  back  do  I  fly, 

and  a  number  of  old  snatches  besides,  between  drunk  and  sober ; 
but  very  few  Aves  or  Penitentiaries  (you  may  believe  me)  were 
among  them.  Longest  Day  set  off  westward  in  beautiful  crimson 
and  gold — the  rest,  some  in  one  fashion,  some  in  another ;  but 
Valentine  and  pretty  May  took  their  departure  together  in  one  of 
the  prettiest  silvery  twilights  a  Lover's  Day  could  wish  to  set  in. 


.Mib^ 


CONrESSIONS  OF  A  PRUNKARD.  193 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  DRUNKARD. 


Dehortations  from  the  use  of  strong  liquors  have  been  the  favor- 
ite topic  of  sober  declaimers  in  all  ages,  and  have  been  received 
with  abundance  of  applause  by  water-drinking  critics.  But  with 
the  patient  himself,  the  man  that  is  to  be  cured,  unfortunately  their 
sound  has  seldom  prevailed.  Yet  the  evil  is  acknowledged,  the 
remedy  simple.  Abstain.  No  force  can  oblige  a  man  to  raise 
the  glass  to  his  head  against  his  will.  'Tis  as  easy  as  not  to  steal, 
not  to  tell  lies. 

Alas  !  the  hand  to  pilfer,  and  the  tongue  to  bear  false  witness, 
have  no  constitutional  tendency.  These  are  actions  indifferent  to 
them.  At  the  first  instance  of  the  reformed  will,  they  can  be 
brought  off  without  a  murmur.  The  itching  finger  is  but  a  figure 
in  speech,  and  the  tongue  of  the  liar  can  with  the  same  natural 
delight  give  forth  useful  truths  with  which  it  has  been  accustomed 
to  scatter  their  pernicious  contraries.  But  when  a  man  has  com- 
menced sot 

O  pause,  thou  sturdy  moralist,  thou  person  of  stout  nerves  and 
a  strong  head,  whose  liver  is  happily  untouched,  and  ere  thy  gorge 
riseth  at  the  name  which  I  have  written,  first  learn  what  the  thijig 
is ;  how  much  of  compassion,  how  much  of  human  allowance, 
thou  mayst  virtuously  mingle  with  thy  disapprobation.  Trample 
not  on  the  ruins  of  man.  Exact  not,  under  so  terrible  a  penalty 
as  infamy,  a  resuscitation  from  a  state  of  death  almost  as  real  as 
that  from  which  Lazarus  rose  not  but  by  a  miracle. 

Begin  a  reformation,  and  custom  will  make  it  easy.  But  what 
if  the  beginning  be  dreadful,  the  first  steps  not  like  climbing  a 
mountain  but  going  through  fire  ?  what  if  the  whole  system  must 
undergo  a  change  violent  as  that  which  we  conceive  of  the  muta- 


124  ELIA. 

tion  of  form  in  some  insects '?  what  if  a  process  comparable  to 
flaying  alive  be  to  be  gone  through  ?  is  the  weakness  that  sinks 
under  such  struggles  to  be  confounded  with  the  pertinacity  which 
clings  to  other  vices,  which  have  induced  no  constitutional  neces- 
sity, no  engagement  of  the  whole  victim,  body  and  soul  ? 

I  have  known  one  in  that  state,  when  he  has  tried  to  abstain 
but  for  one  evening, — though  the  poisonous  potion  had  long  ceased 
to  bring  back  its  first  enchantments,  though  he  was  sure  it  would 
rather  deepen  his  gloom  than  brighten  it, — in  the  violence  of  the 
struggle,  and  the  necessity  he  has  felt  of  getting  rid  of  the  present 
sensation  at  any  rate,  I  have  known  him  to  scream  out,  to  cry 
aloud,  for  the  anguish  and  pain  of  the  strife  within  him. 

Why  should  I  hesitate  to  declare,  that  the  man  of  whom  I  speak 
is  myself?  I  have  no  puling  apology  to  make  to  mankind.  I  see 
them  all  in  one  way  or  another  deviating  from  the  pure  reason. 
It  is  to  my  own  nature  alone  I  am  accountable  for  the  wo  that  I 
havq  brought  upon  it. 

I  believe  that  there  are  constitutions,  robust^heads  and  iron  in- 
sides,  whom  scarce  any  excesses  can  hurt ;  whom  brandy  (I  have 
seen  them  drink  it  like  wine),  at  all  events  whom  wine,  taken  in 
ever  so  plentiful  measure,  can  do  no  worse  injury  to  than  just  to 
muddle  their  faculties,  perhaps  never  very  pellucid.  On  them 
this  discourse  is  wasted.  They  would  but  laugh  at  a  weak  bro- 
ther, who  trying  his  strength  with  them,  and  coming  off  foiled  frona 
the  contest,  would  fain  persuade  them  that  such  agonistic  exer- 
cises are  dangerous.  It  is  to  a  very  different  description  of  per- 
sons I  speak.  It  is  to  the  weak,  the  nervous ;  to  those  who  feel 
the  want  of  some  artificial  aid  to  raise  their  spirits  in  society  to 
what  is  ao  more  than  the  ordinary  pitch  of  all  around  them  with- 
out it.  This  is  the  secret  of  our  drinking.  Such  must  fly  the 
convivial  board  in  the  first  instance,  if  they  do  not  mean  to  sell 
themselves  for  term  of  life. 

Twelve  years  ago  I  had  completed  my  six-and-twentieth  year. 
I  had  lived  from  the  period  of  leaving  school  to  that  time  pretty 
much  in  solitude.  My  companions  were  chiefly  books,  or  at  most 
one  or  two  living  ones  of  my  own  book-loving  and  sober  stamp. 
I  rose  early,  went  to  bed  betimes,  and  the  faculties  which  God 
had  given  me,  I  have  reason  to  think,  did  not  rust  in  me  unused. 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  DRUNKARD.  135 

About  that  time  I  fell  in  with  some  companions  of  a  different 
order.  They  were  men  of  boisterous  spirits,  sitters  up  a-nights, 
disputants,  drunken  ;  yet  seemed  to  have  something  noble  about 
them.  We  dealt  about  the  wit,  or  what  passes  for  it  after  mid- 
night, jovially.  Of  the  quality  called  fancy  I  certainly  possessed 
a  larger  share  than  my  companions.  Encouraged  by  their  ap- 
plause, I  set  up  for  a  professed  joker  !  I,  who  of  all  men  am 
least  fitted  for  such  an  occupation,  having,  in  addition  to  the 
greatest  difficulty  which  I  experience  at  all  times  of  finding 
words  to  express  my  meaning,  a  natural  nervous  impediment  in 
my  speech ! 

Reader,  if  you  are  gifted  with  nerves  like  mine,  aspire  to  any 
character  but  that  of  a  wit.  When  you  find  a  tickling  relish 
upon  your  tongue  disposing  you  to  that  sort  of  conversation,  es- 
pecially if  you  find  a  preternatural  flow  of  ideas  setting  in  upon 
you  at  the  sight  of  a  bottle  and  fresh  glasses,  avoid  giving  way  to 
it  as  you  would  fly  your  greatest  destruction.  If  you  cannot 
crush  the  power  of  fancy,  or  that  within  you  which  you  mistake 
for  such,  divert  it,  give  it  some  other  play.  Write  an  essay,  pen 
a  character  or  description, — but  not  as  I  do  now,  with  tears  trick- 
ling down  your  cheeks. 

To  be  an  object  of  compassion  to  friends,  of  derision  to  foes ;  to 
be  suspected  by  strangers,  stared  at  by  fools  ;  to  be  esteemed  dull 
when  you  cannot  be  witty,  to  be  applauded  for  witty  when  you 
know  that  you  have  been  dull ;  to  be  called  upon  for  the  extem- 
poraneous exercise  of  that  faculty  which  no  premeditation  can 
give  ;  to  be  spurred  on  to  efforts  which  end  in  contempt ;  to  be 
set  on  to  provoke  mirth  which  procures  the  procurer  hatred ;  to 
give  pleasure  and  be  paid  with  squinting  malice ;  to  swallow 
draughts  of  life-destroying  wine  which  are  to  be  distilled  into  airy 
breath  to  tickle  vain  auditors ;  to  mortgage  miserable  morrows 
for  nights  of  madness  ;  to  waste  whole  seas  of  time  upon  those 
who  pay  it  back  in  little  inconsiderable  drops  of  grudging  ap- 
plause,— are  the  wages  of  buffoonery  and  death. 

Time,  which  has  a  sure  stroke  at  dissolving  all  connexions 
which  have  no  solider  fastening  than  this  liquid  cement,  more 
kind  to  me  than  my  own  taste  or  penetration,  at  length  opened  my 
eyes  to  the  supposed  qualities  of  my  first  friends.     No  trace  of 


126  ELIA. 

them  is  left  but  in  the  vices  which  they  introduced,  and  the  habits 
they  infixed.  In  them  my  friends  survive  still,  and  exercise  am- 
ple retribution  for  any  supposed  infidelity  that  I  may  have  been 
guilty  of  towards  them. 

My  next  more  immediate  companions  were  and  are  persons  of 
such  intrinsic  and  felt  worth,  that  though  accidentally  their  ac- 
quaintance has  proved  pernicious  to  me,  I  do  not  know  that  if  the 
thing  were  to  do  over  again,  T  should  have  the  courage  to  eschew 
the  mischief  at  the  price  of  forfeiting  the  benefit.  I  came  to  them 
reeking  from  the  steams  of  my  late  over-heated  notions  of  com- 
panionship ;  and  the  slightest  fuel  which  they  unconsciously 
afforded,  was  sufficient  to  feed  my  old  fires  into  a  propensity. 

They  were  no  drinkers/  but,  one  from  professional  habits,  and 
another  from  a  custom  derived  from  his  father,  smoked  tobacco. 
The  devil  could  not  have  devised  a  more  subtle  trap  to  re-take  a 
backsliding  penitent.  The  transition,  from  gulping  down 
draughts  of  liquid  fire  to  puffing  out  innocuous  blasts  of  dry  smoke, 
was  so  like  cheating  him.  But  he  is  too  hard  for  us  when  we 
hope  to  commute.  He  beats  us  at  barter  ;  and  when  we  think  to 
set  off  a  new  failing  against  an  old  infirmity,  'tis  odds  but  he  puts 
the  trick  upon  us  of  two  for  one.  That  (comparatively)  white 
devil  of  tobacco  brought  with  him  in  the  end  seven  worse  than 
himself. 

It  were  impertinent  to  carry  the  reader  through  all  the  processes 
by  which,  from  smoking  at  first  with  malt  liquor,  I  took  my  de- 
grees through  thin  wines,  through  stronger  wine  and  water,  through 
small  punch,  to  those  juggling  compositions,  which,  under  the  name 
of  mixed  liquors,  slur  a  great  deal  of  brandy  or  other  poison  under 
less  and  less  water  continually,  until  they  come  next  to  none,  and 
so  to  none  at  all .  But  it  is  hateful  to  disclose  the  secrets  of  my 
Tartarus. 

I  should  repel  my  readers,  from  a  mere  incapacity  of  believing 
me,  were  I  to  tell  them  what  tobacco  has  been  to  me,  the  drudg- 
ing service  which  I  have  paid,  the  slavery  which  I  have  vowed  to 
it.  How,  when  I  have  resolved  to  quit  it,  a  feeling  as  of  ingrati- 
tude has  started  up ;  how  it  has  put  on  personal  claims  and  made 
the  demands  of  a  friend  upon  me.  How  the  reading  of  it  casu- 
ally in  a  book,  as  where  Adams  takes  his  whiflT  in  the  chimney- 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  DRUNKARD.  127 

corner  of  some  inn  in  Joseph  Andrews,  or  Piscator  in  the  Complete 
Angler  breaks  his  fast  upon  a  morning  pipe  in  that  delicate  room 
Piscalorihus  Sacrum^  has  in  a  moment  broken  down  the  resistance 
of  weeks.  How  a  pipe  was  ever  in  my  midnight  path  before  me, 
till  the  vision  forced  me  to  realize  it, — how  then  its  ascending  va- 
pors curled,  its  fragrance  lulled,  and  the  thousand  delicious  min- 
isterings  conversant  about  it,  employing  every  faculty,  extracted 
the  sense  of  pain.  How  from  illuminating  it  came  to  darken, 
from  a  quick  solace  it  turned  to  a  negative  relief,  thence  to  a 
restlessness  and  dissatisfaction,  thence  to  a  positive  misery.  How, 
even  now,  when  the  whole  secret  stands  confessed  in  all  its  dread- 
ful truth  before  me,  I  feel  myself  linked  to  it  beyond  the  power 
of  revocation.     Bone  of  my  bone 

Persons  not  accustomed  to  examine  the  motives  of  their  actions, 
to  reckon  up  the  countless  nails  that  rivet  the  chains  of  habit,  or 
perhaps  being  bound  by  none  so  obdurate  as  those  I  have  confess- 
ed to,  may  recoil  from  this  as  from  an  overcharged  picture.  But 
what  short  of  such  a  bondage  is  it,  which  in  spite  of  protesting 
friends,  a  weeping  wife,  and  a  reprobating  world,  chains  down 
many  a  poor  fellow,  of  no  original  indisposition  to  goodness,  to  his 
pipe  and  his  pot ! 

I  have  seen  a  print  after  Correggio,  in  which  three  female  fig- 
ures are  ministering  to  a  man  who  sits  fast  bound  at  the  root  of  a 
tree.  Sensuality  is  soothing  him.  Evil  Habit  is  nailing  him  to 
a  branch,  and  Repugnance  at  the  same  instant  of  time  is  applying 
a  snake  to  his  side.  In  his  face  is  feeble  delight,  the  recollection 
of  past  rather  than  perception  of  present  pleasures,  languid  en- 
joyment of  evil  with  utter  imbecility  to  good,  a  Sybaritic  effemi- 
nacy, a  submission  to  bondage,  the  springs  of  the  will  gone  down 
like  a  broken  clock,  the  sin  and  the  suffering  co-instantaneous,  or 
the  latter  forerunning  the  former,  remorse  preceding  action — all 
this  represented  in  one  point  of  time.  When  I  saw  this,  I  admir- 
ed the  wonderful  skill  of  the  painter.  But  when  I  went  away,  I 
wept,  because  I  thought  of  my  own  condition. 

Of  that  there  is  no  hope  that  it  should  ever  change.  The  wa- 
ters have  gone  over  me.  But  out  of  the  black  depths  could  I  be 
heard,  I  would  cry  out  to  all  those  who  have  but  set  a  foot  in  the 
perilous  flood.     Could  the  youth,  to  whom  the  flavor  of  his  first 


128  ELIA. 

wine  is  delicious  as  the  opening  scenes  of  life  or  the  entering  upon 
some  newly  discovered  paradise,  look  into  my  desolation,  and  be 
made  to  understand  what  a  dreary  thing  it  is  when  a  man  shall 
feel  himself  going  down  a  precipice  with  open  eyes  and  a  passive 
will, — ^to  see  his  destruction  and  have  no  power  to  stop  it,  and  yet 
to  feel  it  all  the  way  emanating  from  himself;  to  perceive  all 
goodness  emptied  out  of  him,  and  yet  not  to  be  able  to  forget  a 
time  when  it  was  otherwise  ;  to  bear  about  the  piteous  spectacle 
of  his  own  self- ruins  : — could  he  see  my  fevered  eye,  feverish  with 
last  night's  drinking,  and  feverishly  looking  for  this  night's  repe- 
tition of  the  folly  ;  could  he  feel  the  body  of  the  death  out  of 
which  I  cry  hourly  with  feebler  and  feebler  outcry  to  be  deliver- 
ed,— it  were  enough  to  make  him  dash  the  sparkling  beverage 
to  the  earth  in  all  the  pride  of  its  mantling  temptation  j  to  make 
him  clasp  his  teeth, 

and  not  undo  'em 
To  suffer  wkt  damnation  to  run  thro'  'em. 

Yes,  but  (methinks  1  liear  somebody  object)  if  sobriety  be  tiiat 
fine  thing  you  would  have  us  to  understand,  if  the  comforts  of  a 
cool  brain  are  to  be  preferred  to  that  state  of  heated  excitement 
which  you  describe  and  deplore,  what  hinders  in  your  own  in- 
stance that  you  do  not  return  to  those  habits  from  which  you 
would  induce  others  never  to  swerve '?  if  the  blessing  be  worth 
preserving,  is  it  not  worth  recovering  ? 

Recovering ! — O  if  a  wish  could  transport  me  back  to  those 
days  of  youth,  when  a  draught  from  the  next  clear  spring  could 
slake  any  heats  which  summer  suns  and  youthful  exercise  had 
power  to  stir  up  in  the  blood,  how  gladly  would  I  return  to  thee, 
pure  element,  the  drink  of  children,  and  of  child-like  holy  her- 
mit !  In  my  dreams  I  can  sometimes  fancy  thy  cool  refreshment 
purling  over  my  burning  tongue.  But  my  waking  stomach 
rejects  it.  That  which  refreshes  innocence  only  makes  me  sick 
and  faint. 

But  is  there  no  middle  way  betwixt  total  abstinence  and  the  ex- 
cess which  kills  you  ?  For  your  sake,  reader,  and  that  you  may 
never  attain  to  my  experience,  with  pain  I  must  utter  the  dread- 
ful truth,  that  there  is  none,  none  that  I  can  find.     In  my  stage 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  DRUNKARD.  129 

of  liabit  (I  speak  not  of  habits  less  confirmed — for  some  of  them 
I  believe  the  advice  to  be  most  prudential)  in  the  stage  which  I 
have  reached,  to  stop  short  of  that  measure  which  is  sufficient  to 
draw  on  torpor  and  sleep,  the  benumbing  apoplectic  sleep  of  the 
drunkard,  is  to  have  taken  none  at  all.  The  pain  of  the  self-de- 
nial is  all  one.  And  what  that  is,  I  had  rather  the  reader  should 
believe  on  my  credit,  than  know  from  his  own  trial.  He  will 
come  to  know  it,  whenever  he  shall  arrive  at  that  state,  in  which, 
paradoxical  as  it  may  appear,  reason  sJiall  only  visit  him  through 
intoxication :  for  it  is  a  fearful  truth,  that  the  intellectual  faculties 
by  repeated  acts  of  intemperance  may  be  driven  from  their  or- 
derly sphere  of  action,  their  clear  daylight  ministeries,  until  they 
shall  be  brought  at  last  to  depend,  for  the  faint  manifestation  of 
their  departing  energies,  upon  the  returning  periods  of  the  fatal 
madness  to  which  they  owe  their  devastation.  The  drinking  man 
is  never  less  himself  than  during  his  sober  intervals.  Evil  is  so 
far  his  good.* 

Behold  me  then,  in  the  robust  period  of  life,  reduced  to  imbe- 
cility and  decay.  Hear  me  count  my  gains,  and  the  profit  which 
I  have  derived  from  the  midnight  cup. 

Twelve  years  ago,  I  was  possessed  of  a  healthy  frame  of  mind 
and  body.  I  was  never  strong,  but  I  think  my  constitution  (for 
a  weak  one)  was  as  happily  exempt  from  the  tendency  to  any 
malady  as  it  was  possible  to  be.  I  scarce  knew  what  it  was  to 
ail  anything.  Now,  except  when  I  am  losing  myself  in  a  sea  of 
drink,  I  am  never  free  from  these  uneasy  sensations  in  head  and 
stomach,  which  are  so  much  worse  to  bear  than  any  definite  pains 
or  aches. 

At  that  time  I  was  seldom  in  bed  afler  six  in  the  morning, 
summer  and  winter.  I  awoke  refreshed,  and  seldom  without 
some  merry  thoughts  in  my  head,  or  some  piece  of  a  song  to 
welcome  the  new-born  day.     Now,  the  first  feeling  which  besets 

*  When  poor  M painted  his  last  picture,  with  a  pencil  in  one  trem- 
bling hand,  and  a  glass  of  brandy  and  water  in  the  other,  his  fingers  owed 
the  comparative  steadiness  with  which  they  were  enabled  to  go  through 
their  task  in  an  imperfect  manner,  to  a  temporary  firmness  derived  from  a 
repetition  of  practices,  the  general  effect  of  which  had  shaken  both  them 
and  him  so  terribly. 

PART  II.  10 


130  ELIA. 

me,  after  stretching  out  the  hours  of  recumbence  to  their  last 
possible  extent,  is  a  forecast  of  the  wearisome  day  that  lies  before 
me,  with  a  secret  wish  that  I  could  have  lain  on  still,  or  never 
awaked. 

Life  itself,  my  waking  life,  has  much  of  the  confusion,  the 
trouble,  and  obscure  perplexity,  of  an  ill  dream.  In  the  day 
time  I  stumble  upon  dark  mountains. 

Business,  which,  though  never  very  particularly  adapted  to  my 
nature,  yet  as  something  of  necessity  to  be  gone  through,  and 
therefore  best  undertaken  with  cheerfulness,  I  used  to  enter  upon 
with  some  degree  of  alacrity,  now  wearies,  affrights,  perplexes 
me.  I  fancy  all  sorts  of  discouragements,  and  am  ready  to  give 
up  an  occupation  which  gives  me  bread,  from  a  harrassing  conceit 
of  incapacity.  The  slightest  commission  given  me  by  a  friend, 
or  any  small  duty  which  I  have  to  perform  for  myself,  as  giving 
orders  to  a  tradesman,  &c.,  haunts  me  as  a  labor  impossible  to 
be  got  through.     So  much  the  springs  of  action  are  broken. 

The  same  cowardice  attends  me  in  all  my  intercourse  with 
mankind.  I  dare  not  promise  that  a  friend's  honor,  or  his  cause, 
would  be  safe  in  my  keeping,  if  I  were  put  to  the  expense  of  any 
manly  resolution  in  defending  it.  So  much  the  springs  of  moral 
action  are  deadened  within  me. 

My  favorite  occupations  in  times  past  now  cease  to  entertain. 
I  can  do  nothing  readily.  Application  for  ever  so  short  a  time 
kills  me.  This  poor  abstract  of  my  condition  was  penned  at  long 
intervals,  with  scarcely  any  attempt  at  connection  of  thought, 
which  is  now  difficult  to  me. 

The  noble  passages  which  formerly  delighted  me  in  history  or 
poetic  fiction,  now  only  draw  a  few  weak  tears,  allied  to  dotage. 
My  broken  and  dispirited  nature  seems  to  sink  before  anything 
great  and  admirable. 

I  perpetually  catch  myself  in  tears,  for  any  cause,  or  none. 
It  is  inexpressible  how  much  this  infirmity  adds  to  a  sense  of 
shame,  and  a  general  feeling  of  deterioration. 

These  are  some  of  the  instances,  concerning  which  I  can  say 
with  truth,  that  it  was  not  always  so  with  me. 

Shall  I  lift  up  the  veil  of  my  weakness  any  further  ?  or  is  thi* 
disclosure  sufficient  ? 


ppv 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  DRUNKARD.  Ml 

I  am  a  poor  nameless  egotist,  who  have  no  vanity  to  consult 
by  these  Confessions.  I  know  not  whether  I  shall  be  laughed  at, 
or  heard  seriously.  Such  as  they  are,  I  commend  them  to  the 
reader's  attention,  if  he  find  his  own  case  any  way  touched.  I 
have  told  him  what  I  am  come  to.     Let  him  stop  in  time. 


1S3  ELIA. 


OLD  CHINA. 


I  HAVE  an  almost  feminine  partiality  for  old  china.  When  I  go 
to  see  any  great  house,  I  inquire  for  the  china-closet,  and  next  for 
the  picture  gallery.  I  cannot  defend  the  order  of  preference,  but 
by  saying,  that  we  have  all  some  taste  or  other,  of  too  ancient  a 
date  to  admit  of  our  remembering  distinctly  that  it  was  an  ac- 
quired one.  I  can  call  to  mind  the  first  play,  and  the  first 
exhibition,  that  I  was  taken  to ;  but  I  am  not  conscious  of  a  time 
when  china  jars  and  saucers  were  introduced  into  my  imagination. 

I  had  no  repugnance  then — why  should  I  now  have  ? — to  those 
little,  lawless,  azure-tinctured  grotesques,  that  under  the  notion 
of  men  and  women,  float  about,  uncircumscribed  by  any  element, 
in  that  world  before  perspective — a  china  tea-cup. 

I  like  to  see  my  old  friends — whom  distance  cannot  diminish — 
figuring  up  in  the  air  (so  they  appear  to  our  optics),  yet  on  terra 
finna  still — for  so  we  must  in  courtesy  interpret  that  speck  of 
deeper  blue, — which  the  decorous  artist,  to  prevent  absurdity,  had 
made  to  spring  up  beneath  their  sandals. 

I  love  the  men  with  women's  faces,  and  the  women,  if  possi- 
ble, with  still  more  womanish  expressions. 

Here  is  a  young  and  courtly  Mandarin,  handing  tea  to  a  lady 
from  a  salver — two  miles  off.  See  how  distance  seems  to  set  off 
respect !  And  here  the  same  lady,  or  another — for  likeness  is 
identity  on  tea-cups — is  stepping  into  a  little  fairy  boat,  moored 
on  the  hither  side  of  this  calm  garden  river,  with  a  dainty  minc- 
ing foot,  which  in  a  right  angle  of  incidence  (as  angles  go  in  our 
world)  must  infallibly  land  her  in  the  midst  of  a  flowery  mead — 
a  furlong  off*  on  the  other  side  of  the  same  strange  stream ! 

Farther  on — if  far  or  near  can  be  predicated  of  their  world — 
see  horses,  trees,  pagodas,  dancing  the  hays. 


OLD  CHINA.  13'3 


Here — a  cow  and  rabbit  couchant,  and  co-extensive — so  objects 
show,  seen  through  the  lucid  atmosphere  of  fine  Cathay. 

I  was  pointing  out  to  my  cousin  last  evening,  over  our  Hyson 
(which  we  are  old-fashioned  enough  to  drink  unmixed  still  of  an 
afternoon)  some  of  these  speciosa  miracula  upon  a  set  of  extraor- 
dinary old  blue  china  (a  recent  purchase)  which  we  were  now 
for  the  first  time  using  ;  and  could  not  help  remarking,  how  favor- 
able circumstances  had  been  to  us  of  late  years,  that  we  could 
afibrd  to  please  the  eye  sometimes  with  trifles  of  this  sort — when 
a  passing  sentiment  seemed  to  overshade  the  brows  of  my  com- 
panion.    I  am  quick  at  detecting  these  summer  clouds  in  Bridget. 

"  I  wish  the  good  old  times  would  come  again,"  she  said,  "  when 
we  were  not  quite  so  rich.  I  do  not  mean,  that  I  want  to  be 
poor ;  but  there  was  a  middle  state  " — so  she  was  pleased  to 
ramble  on, — *'  in  which  I  am  sure  we  were  a  great  deal  happier* 
A  purchase  is  but  a  purchase,  now  that  you  have  money  enough 
and  to  spare.  Formerly  it  used  to  be  a  triumph.  When  we 
coveted  a  cheap  luxury  (and,  O  !  how  much  ado  1  had  to  get 
you  to  consent  in  those  times  !) — we  were  used  to  have  a  debate 
two  or  three  days  before,  and  to  weigh  the  for  and  against^  and 
think  what  we  might  spare  it  out  of,  and  what  saving  we  could 
hit  upon,  that  should  be  an  equivalent.  A  thing  was  worth  buy- 
ing then,  when  we  felt  the  money  that  we  paid  for  it. 

"  Do  you  remember  the  brown  suit,  which  you  made  to  hang 
upon  you,  till  all  your  friends  cried  shame  upon  you,  it  grew  so 
thread-bare — and  all  because  of  that  folio  Beaumont  and  Fletcher, 
which  you  dragged  home  late  at  night  from  Barker's  in  Co  vent- 
Garden  ?  Do  you  remember  how  we  eyed  it  for  weeks  before 
we  could  make  up  our  minds  to  the  purchase,  and  had  not  come 
to  a  determination  till  it  was  near  ten  o'clock  of  the  Saturday 
night,  when  you  set  off  from  Islington,  fearing  you  should  be  too 
late — and  when  the  old  book-seller  with  some  grumbling  opened 
his  shop,  and  by  the  twinkling  taper  (for  he  was  setting  bed- 
wards)  lighted  out  the  relic  from  his  dup*y  treasures — and  when 
you  lugged  it  home,  wishing  it  were  t^vlce  as  cumbersome — and 
when  you  presented  it  to  me — and  when  we  were  exploring  the 
perfectness  of  it  {collating  you  called  it) — and  while  I  was  re- 
pairing some  of  the  loose  leaves  with  paste,  which  your  impa- 


134  ELIA. 

tience  would  not  suffer  to  be  left  till  daybreak — was  there  no 
pleasure  in  being  a  poor  man  ?  or  can  those  neat  black  clothes 
which  you  wear  now,  and  are  so  careful  to  keep  brushed,  since 
we  have  become  rich  and  finical,  give  you  half  the  honest  vanity, 
with  which  you  flaunted  it  about  in  that  overworn  suit — your  old 
corbeau — for  four  or  five  weeks  longer  than  you  should  have 
done,  to  pacify  your  conscience  for  the  mighty  sum  of  fifteen — or 
sixteen  shillings  was  it  ? — a  great  affair  we  thought  it  then — 
which  you  had  lavished  on  the  old  folio.  Now  you  can  afford  to 
buy  any  book  that  pleases  you,  but  I  do  not  see  that  you  ever 
bring  me  home  any  nice  old  purchases  now. 

"  When  you  came  home  with  twenty  apologies  for  laying  out  a 
less  number  of  shillings  upon  that  print  after  Lionardo,  which  we 
christened  the  '  Lady  Blanch ;'  when  you  looked  at  the  pur- 
chase, and  thought  of  the  money — and  thought  of  the  money, 
and  looked  again  at  the  picture — was  there  no  pleasure  in  being 
a  poor  man  ?  Now,  you  have  nothing  to  do  but  to  walk  into  Col- 
naghi's,  and  buy  a  wilderness  of  Lionardos.     Yet  do  you  ? 

"  Then,  do  you  remember  our  pleasant  walks  to  Enfield,  and 
Potter's  bar,  and  Waltham,  when  we  had  a  holiday — holidays, 
and  all  other  fun,  are  gone  now  we  are  rich — and  the  little  hand- 
basket  in  which  I  used  to  deposit  our  day's  fare  of  savory  cold 
lamb  and  salad — and  how  you  would  pry  about  at  noon-tide  for 
some  decent  house,  where  we  might  go  in  and  produce  our  store 
— only  paying  for  the  ale  that  you  must  call  for — and  speculate 
upon  the  looks  of  the  landlady,  and  whether  she  was  likely  to 
allow  us  a  table-cloth — and  wish  for  such  another  honest  hostess, 
as  Izaak  Walton  has  described  many  a  one  on  the  pleasant  banks 
of  the  Lea,  when  he  went  a  fishing — and  sometimes  they  would 
prove  obliging  enough,  and  sometimes  they  would  look  grudgingly 
upon  us — but  we  had  cheerful  looks  still  for  one  another,  and 
would  eat  our  plain  food  savorily,  scarcely  grudging  Piscator  his 
Trout  Hall  ?  Now — when  we  go  out  a  day's  pleasuring,  which 
is  seldom  moreover,  we  ride  part  of  the  way — and  go  into  a  fine 
inn,  and  order  the  best  oi  dinners,  never  debating  the  expense — 
which  after  all  never  has  half  the  relish  of  those  chance  country 
3naps,  when  we  were  at  the  mercy  of  uncertain  usage,  and  a 
precarious  welcome.  .    , 


OLD  CHINA.  1S5 


"  You  are  too  proud  to  see  a  play  anywhere  now  but  in  the 
pit.  Do  you  remember  where  it  was  we  used  to  sit,  when  we 
saw  the  Battle  of  Hexham,  and  the  surrender  of  Calais,  and 
Bannister  and  Mrs.  Bland  in  the  Children  in  the  Wood — when 
we  squeezed  out  our  shillings  a-piece  to  sit  three  or  four  times  in 
a  season  in  the  one-shilling  gallery — where  you  felt  all  the  time 
that  you  ought  not  to  have  brought  me — and  more  strongly  I  felt 
obligation  to  you  for  having  brought  me — and  the  pleasure  was 
the  better  for  a  little  shame — and  when  the  curtain  drew  up,  what 
cared  we  for  our  place  in  the  house,  or  what  mattered  it  where 
we  were  sitting,  when  our  thoughts  were  with  Rosalind  in  Arden, 
or  with  Viola  at  the  Court  of  Illyria  ?  You  used  to  say,  that  the 
Gallery  was  the  best  place  of  all  for  enjoying  a  play  socially — 
that  the  relish  of  such  exhibitions  must  be  in  proportion  to  the 
infrequency  of  going — that  the  company  we  met  there,  not  being 
in  general  readers  of  plays,  were  obliged  to  attend  the  more,  and 
did  attend,  to  what  was  going  on,  on  the  stage — because  a  word 
lost  would  have  been  a  chasm,  which  it  was  impossible  for  them 
to  fill  up.  With  such  reflections  we  consoled  our  pride  then — 
and  I  appeal  to  you,  whether,  as  a  woman,  I  met  generally  with 
less  attention  and  accommodation,  than  I  have  done  since  in  more 
expensive  situations  in  the  house  ?  The  getting  in  indeed,  and 
the  crowding  up  those  inconvenient  staircases,  was  bad  enough, — 
but  there  was  still  a  law  of  civility  to  woman  recognized  to  quite 
as  great  an  extent  as  we  ever  found  in  the  other  passages — and 
how  a  little  difficulty  overcome  heightened  the  snug  seat  and  the 
play,  afterwards !  Now  we  can  only  pay  our  money  and  walk 
in.  You  cannot  see,  you  say,  in  the  galleries  now.  I  am  sure 
we  saw,  and  heard  too,  well  enough  then — but  sight,  and  all  I 
think,  is  gone  with  our  poverty. 

"  There  was  pleasure  in  eating  strawberries,  before  they  became 
quite  common — in  the  first  dish  of  peas,  while  they  were  yet  dear 
— ^to  have  them  for  a  nice  supper,  a  treat.  What  treat  can  we  have 
now  ?  If  we  were  to  treat  ourselves  now — that  is,  to  have  dainties 
a  little  above  our  means,  it  would  be  selfish  and  wicked.  It  is  the 
very  little  more  that  we  allow  ourselves  beyond  what  the  actual 
poor  can  get  at,  that  makes  what  I  call  a  treat — when  two  people 
living  together,  ^s  we  have  done,  now  and  then  indulge  then;. 


136  ELI  A. 

. . »       ^ 

selves  in  a  cheap  luxury,  which  both  like  ;  while  each  apologises, 
and  is  willing  to  take  both  halves  of  the  blame  to  his  single  share. 
I  see  no  harm  in  people  making  much  of  themselves,  in  that 
sense  of  the  word.  It  may  give  them  a  hint  how  to  make  much 
of  others.  But  now — what  I  mean  by  the  word — we  never  do 
make  much  of  ourselves.  None  but  the  poor  can  do  it.  I  do 
not  mean  the  veriest  poor  of  all,  but  persons  as  we  were,  just 
above  poverty. 

"  I  know  what  you  were  going  to  say,  that  it  is  mighty  pleasant 
at  the  end  of  the  year  to  make  all  meet — and  much  ado  we  used 
to  have  every  Thirty-first  Night  of  December  to  account  for  our 
exceedings — many  a  long  face  did  you  make  over  your  puzzled 
accounts,  and  in  contriving  to  make  it  out  how  we  had  spent  so 
much — or  that  we  had  not  spent  so  much — or  that  it  was  impos- 
sible we  should  spend  so  much  next  year — and  still  we  found  our 
slender  capital  decreasing — but  then,  betwixt  ways,  and  projects, 
and  compromises  of  one  sort  or  another,  and  talk  of  curtailing 
this  charge,  and  doing  without  that  for  the  future — and  the  hope 
that  youth  brings,  and  laughing  spirits  (in  which  you  were  never 
poor  till  now),  we  pocketed  up  our  loss,  and  in  conclusion,  with 
*  lusty  brimmers '  (as  you  used  to  quote  it  out  of  hearty  cheerful 
Mr.  Cotton,  as  you  called  him),  we  used  to  welcome  in  the  '  com- 
ing guest.'  Now  we  have  no  reckoning  at  all  at  the  end  of  the 
old  year — no  flattering  promises  about  the  new  year  doing  better 
for  us." 

Bridget  is  so  sparing  of  her  speech  on  most  occasions,  that 
when  she  gets  into  a  rhetorical  vein,  I  am  careful  how  I  interrupt 
it.  I  could  not  help,  however,  smiling  at  the  phantom  of  wealth 
which  her  dear  imagination  had  conjured  up  out  of  a  clear  income 
of  poor hundred  pounds  a  year.  "  It  is  true  we  were  hap- 
pier when  we  were  poorer,  but  we  were  also  younger,  my  cousin. 
[  am  afraid  we  must  put  up  with  the  excess,  for  if  we  were  to 
shake  the  superflux  into  the  sea,  we  should  not  much  mend  our- 
selves. That  we  had  much  to  struggle  with,  as  we  grew  up 
together,  we  have  reason  to  be  most  thankful.  It  strengthened, 
and  knit  our  compact  closer.  We  could  never  have  been  what 
we  have  been  to  each  other,  if  we  had  always  had  the  sufficiency 
which  you  now  complain  of.     The  resisting  power — ^those  natural 


OLD  CHINA.  187 


dilations  of  the  youthful  spirit,  which  circumstances  cannot  straiten 
— with  us  are  long  since  passed  away.  Competence  to  age  is 
supplementary  youth,  a  sorry  supplement  indeed,  but  I  fear  the 
best  that  is  to  be  had.  We  must  ride  where  we  formerly  walked 
— live  better  and  lie  softer — and  shall  be  wise  to  do  so— than  we 
had  means  to  do  in  those  good  old  days  you  speak  of.  Yet  could 
those  days  return — could  you  and  I  once  more  walk  our  thirty 
miles  a  day— could  Bannister  and  Mrs.  Bland  again  be  young, 
and  you  and  I  be  young  to  see  them — could  the  good  old  one-shil- 
ling gallery  days  return — they  are  dreams,  my  cousin,  now — but 
could  you  and  I  at  this  moment,  instead  of  this  quiet  argument, 
by  our  well-carpeted  fire-sjde,  sitting  on  this  luxurious  sofa — be 
once  more  struggling  up  those  inconvenient  stair-cases,  pushed 
about,  and  squeezed,  and  elbowed  by  the  poorest  rabble  of  poor 
gallery  scramblers — could  I  once  more  hear  those  anxious 
shrieks  of  yours — and  the  delicious  Thank  God,  we  are  safe,  which 
always  followed  when  the  topmost  stair,  conquered,  let  in  the  first 
light  of  the  cheerful  theatre  down  beneath  us — I  know  not  the 
fathom  line  that  ever  touched  a  descent  so  deep  as  I  would  be 
willing  to  bury  more  wealth  in  than  Croesus  had,  or  the  great 

Jew  R is  supposed  to  have,  to  purchase  it.     And  now  do 

just  look  at  that  merry  little  Chinese  waiter  holding  an  umbrella, 
big  enough  for  a  bed-tester,  over  the  head  of  that  pretty  insipid 
half  Madona-ish  chit  of  a  lady  in  that  very  blue  summer-house." 


138  ELIA. 


THE  CHILD  ANGEL;  A  DREAM. 


I  CHANCED  Upon  the  prettiest,  oddest,  fantastical  thing  of  a 
dream  the  other  night,  that  you  shall  hear  of.  I  had  been 
reading  the  "  Loves  of  the  Angels,"  and  went  to  bed  with  my 
head  full  of  speculations,  suggested  by  that  extraordinary  legend. 
It  had  given  birth  to  innumerable  conjectures  ;  and  I  remember 
the  last  waking  thought,  which  I  gave  expression  to  on  my  pil- 
low, was  a  sort  of  wonder  "  what  could  come  of  it." 

I  was  suddenly  transported,  how  or  whither  I  could  scarcely 
make  out — but  to  some  celestial  region.  It  was  not  the  real 
heavens  neither — not  the  downright  Bible  heaven — but  a  kind 
of  fairy-land  heaven,  about  which  a  poor  human  fancy  may  have 
leave  to  sport  and  air  itself,  I  will  hope,  without  presumption. 

Methought — what  wild  things  dreams  are  ? — I  was  present — 
at  what  would  you  imagine — at  an  angel's  gossipping. 

Whence  it  came,  or  how  it  came,  or  who  bid  it  come,  or  whe- 
ther It  came  purely  of  its  own  head,  neither  you  nor  I  know — but 
there  lay,  sure  enough,  wrapt  in  its  little  cloudy  swaddling-bands 
— a  Child  Angel. 

Sun-threads — filmy  beams — ran  through  the  celestial  napery 
of  what  seemed  its  princely  cradle.  All  the  winged  orders 
hovered  round,  watching  when  the  new-born  should  open  its  yet 
closed  eyes  ;  which,  when  it  did,  first  one,  and  then  the  other — 
with  a  solicitude  and  apprehension,  yet  not  such  as,  stained  with 
fear,  dim  the  expanding  eyelids  of  mortal  infants,  but  as  if  to 
explore  its  path  in  those  its  unhereditary  palaces — what  an  inex- 
tinguishable titter  that  time  spared  not  celestial  visages !  Nor 
wanted  there  to  my  seeming — O  the  inexplicable  simpleness  of 
dreams ! — bowls  of  that  cheering  nectar, 

— which  mortals  caudle  call  below 


THE  CHILD  ANGEL;  A  DREAM.  139 

Nor  were  wanting  faces  of  female  ministrants — stricken  in  years, 
as  it  might  seem — so  dexterous  were  those  heavenly  attendants 
to  counterfeit  kindly  similitudes  of  earth,  to  greet,  with  terres- 
trial child-rites  the  young  present^  which  earth  had  made  to 
heaven. 

Then  were  celestial  harpings  heard,  not  in  full  symphony  as 
those  by  which  the  spheres  are  tutored ;  but,  as  loudest  instru- 
ments on  earth  speak  oftentimes  muffled ;  so  to  accommodate 
their  sound  the  better  to  the  weak  ears  of  the  imperfect-born. 
And,  with  the  noise  of  those  subdued  soundings,  the  Angclet 
sprang  forth,  fluttering  its  rudiments  of  pinions — but  forthwith 
flagged  and  was  recovered  into  the  arms  of  those  full-winged  an- 
gels. And  a  wonder  it  was  to  see  how,  as  years  went  round  in 
heaven — a  year  in  dreams  is  as  a  day— continually  its  white 
shoulders  put  forth  buds  of  wings,  but  wanting  the  perfect  angelic 
nutriment,  anon  was  shorn  of  its  aspiring,  and  fell  fluttering — 
still  caught  by  angel  hands — for  ever  to  put  forth  shoots,  and  to 
fall  fluttering,  because  its  birth  was  not  of  the  unmixed  vigor  of 
heaven. 

And  a  name  was  given  to  the  Babe  Angel,  and  it  was  to 
be  called  Ge-Urania,  because  its  production  was  of  earth  and 
heaven. 

And  it  could  not  taste  of  death,  by  reason  of  its  adoption  into 
immortal  palaces:  but  it  was  to  know  weakness,  and  reliance, 
and  the  shadow  of  human  imbecility ;  and  it  wfent  with  a  lame 
gait ;  but  in  its  goings  it  exceeded  all  mortal  children  in  grace 
and  swiftness.  Then  pity  first  sprang  up  in  angelic  bosoms; 
and  yearnings  (like  the  human)  touched  them  at  the  sight  of  the 
immortal  lame  one. 

And  with  pain  did  then  first  those  Intuitive  Essences,  with  pain 
and  strife,  to  their  natures  (not  grief),  put  back  their  bright  intel- 
ligences, and  reduce  their  ethereal  minds,  schooling  them  to 
degrees  and  slower  processes,  so  to  adapt  their  lessons  to  the 
gradual  illumination  (as  must  needs  be)  of  the  half-earth-born ; 
and  what  intuitive  notices  they  could  not  repel  (by  reason  that 
their  nature  is  to  know  all  things  at  once)  the  half-heavenly 
novice,  by  the  better  part  of  its  nature,  aspired  to  receive  into  its 


140  ELIA. 

understanding ;  so  that  Humility  and  Aspiration  went  on  even- 
paced  in  the  instruction  of  the  glorious  Amphibium. 

But,  by  reason  that  Mature  Humanity  is  too  gross  to  breathe 
the  air  of  that  super-subtile  region,  its  portion  was,  and  is,  to  be  a 
child  for  ever.  • 

And  because  the  human  part  of  it  might  not  press  into  the 
heart  and  inwards  of  the  palace  of  its  adoption,  those  full-natured 
angels  tended  it  by  turns  in  the  purlieus  of  the  palace,  where 
were  shady  groves  and  rivulets,  like  this  green  earth  from  which 
it  came :  so  Love,  with  Voluntary  Humility,  waited  upon  the 
entertainment  of  the  new-adopted. 

And  myriads  of  years  rolled  round  (in  dreams  Time  is  no- 
thing), and  still  it  kept,  and  is  to  keep,  perpetual  childhood,  and  is 
the  Tutelar  Genius  of  Childhood  upon  earth,  and  still  goes  lame 
and  lovely. 

By  the  banks  of  the  river  Pison  is  seen,  lone  sitting  by  the 
grave  of  the  terrestrial  Adah,  whom  the  angel  Nadir  loved,  a 
Child ;  but  not  the  same  which  I  saw  in  heaven.  A  mournful 
hue  overcasts  its  lineaments ;  nevertheless,  a  correspondency  is 
between  the  child  by  the  grave,  and  that  celestial  orphan,  whom 
I  saw  above ;  and  the  dimness  of  the  grief  upon  the  heavenly,  is 
a  shadow  or  emblem  of  that  which  stains  the  beauty  of  the  ter- 
restrial. And  this  correspondency  is  not  to  be  understood  but  by 
dreams. 

And  in  the  archives  of  heaven  I  had  grace  to  read,  how  that 
once  the  angel  Nadir,  being  exiled  from  his  place  for  mortal 
passion,  upspringing  on  the  wings  of  parental  love  (such  power 
had  parental  love  for  a  moment  to  suspend  the  else-irrevocable 
law),  appeared  for  a  brief  instant  in  his  station,  and,  depositing  a 
wondrous  Birth,  straightway  disappeared,  and  the  palaces  knew 
him  no  more.  And  this  charge  was  the  self-same  Babe,  who 
goeth  lame  and  lovely — but  Adah  sleepeth  by  the  river  Pison. 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  141 


POPULAR  FALLACIES 


THAT   A    BULLY   IS   ALWAYS    A    COWARD. 

This  axiom  contains  a  principle  of  compensation,  whiph  disposes 
us  to  admit  the  truth  of  it.  But  there  is  no  safe  trusting  to  dic- 
tionaries and  definitions.  We  should  more  willingly  fall  in  with 
this  popular  language,  if  we  did  not  find  brutality  sometimes 
awkwardly  coupled  with  valor  in  the  same  vocabulary.  The 
comic  writers,  with  their  poetical  justice,  have  contributed  not  a 
little  to  mislead  us  upon  this  point.  To  see  a  hectoring  fellow 
exposed  and  beaten  upon  the  stage,  has  something  in  it  wonder, 
fully  diverting.  Some  people's  share  of  animal  spirits  is  notori- 
ously low  and  defective.  It  has  not  strength  to  raise  a  vapor,  or 
furnish  out  the  wind  of  a  tolerable  bluster.  These  love  to  be  told 
that  huffing  is  no  part  of  valor.  The  truest  courage  with  them 
is  that  which  is  the  least  noisy  and  obtrusive.  But  confront  one 
of  these  silent  heroes  with  the  swaggerer  of  real  life,  and  his 
confidence  in  the  theory  quickly  vanishes.  Pretensions  do  not 
uniformly  bespeak  non-performance.  A  modest  inofliensive  de- 
portment does  not  necessarily  imply  valor ;  neither  does  the 
absence  of  it  justify  us  in  denying  that  quality.  Hickman  wanted 
modesty — we  do  not  mean  Mm  of  Clarissa — but  who  ever  doubted 
his  courage  ?  Even  the  poets — upon  whom  this  equitable  distri- 
bution of  qualities  should  be  most  binding — have  thought  it 
agreeable  to  nature  to  depart  from  the  rule  upon  occasion. 
Harapha,  in  the  "  Agonistes,"  is  indeed  a  bully  upon  the  received 
notions.  Milton  has  made  him  at  once  a  blusterer,  a  giant,  and  a 
dastard.     But   Almanzor,   in   Dryden,  talks  of  driving   armies 


142  ELIA. 

singly  before  him — and  does  it.  Tom  Brown  has  a  shrewder 
insight  into  this  kind  of  character  than  either  of  his  predecessors. 
He  divides  the  palm  more  equably,  and  allows  his  hero  a  sort  of 
dimidiate  pre-eminence  : — "  Bully  Dawson  kicked  by  half  the 
town,  and  half  the  town  kicked  by  Bully  Dawson."  This  was 
true  distributive  justice. 


II. 

THAT    ILL-GOTTEN   GAIN   NEVER   PROSPERS. 

The  weakest  part  of  mankind  have  this  saying  commonest  In 
their  mouth.  It  is  the  trite  consolation  administered  to  the  easy 
dupe,  when  he  has  been  tricked  out  of  his  money  or  estate,  that 
the  acquisition  of  it  will  do  the  owner  no  good.  But  the  rogues 
of  this  world — the  prudenter  part  of  them,  at  least — know  better ; 
and  if  the  observation  had  been  as  true  as  it  is  old,  would  not 
have  failed  by  this  time  to  have  discovered  it.  They  have  pretty 
sharp  distinctions  of  the  fluctuating  and  the  permanent.  "  Lightly 
come,  lightly  go,"  is  a  proverb,  which  they  can  very  well  afford 
to  leave,  when  they  leave  little  else,  to  the  losers.  They  do  not 
always  find  manors,  got  by  rapine  or  chicanery,  insensible  to  melt 
away,  as  the  poets  will  have  it ;  or  that  all  gold  glides,  like  thaw- 
ing snow,  from  the  thief's  hand  that  grasps  it.  Church  land, 
alienated  to  lay  uses,  was  formerly  denounced  to  have  this  slip- 
pery  quality.  But  some  portions  of  it  somehow  always  stuck  so 
fast,  that  the  denunciators  have  been  fain  to  postpone  the  prophecy 
of  refundment  to  a  late  posterity. 


III. 

THAT   A    MAN   MUST   NOT   LAUGH   AT   HIS   OWN   JEST. 

The  severest  exaction  surely  ever  invented  upon  the  self-denial 
of  poor  human  nature !     This  is  to  expect  a  gentleman  to  give  a 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  143 

treat  without  partaking  of  it ;  to  sit  esurient  at  his  own  table,  and 
commend  the  flavor  of  his  venison  upon  the  absurd  strength  of  his 
never  touching  it  himself.  On  the  contrary,  we  love  to  see  a  wag 
taste  his  own  joke  to  his  party ;  to  watch  a  quirk  or  a  merry 
conceit  flickering  upon  the  lips  some  seconds  before  the  tongue  is 
delivered  of  it.  If  it  be  good,  fresh,  and  racy — begotten  of  the 
occasion ;  if  he  that  utters  it  never  thought  it  before,  he  is  natu- 
rally the  first  to  be  tickled  with  it ;  and  any  suppression  of  such 
complacency  we  hold  to  be  churlish  and  insulting.  What  does 
it  seem  to  imply,  but  that  your  company  is  weak  or  foolish 
enough  to  be  moved  by  an  image  or  a  fancy,  that  shall  stir  you 
not  at  all,  or  but  faintly  ?  This  is  exactly  the  humor  of  the  fine 
gentleman  in  Mandeville,  who,  while  he  dazzles  his  guests  with 
the  display  of  some  costly  toy,  affects  himself  to  "  see  nothing 
considerable  in  it." 


IV. 


THAT   SUCH   A    ONE    SHOWS   HIS   BREEDING. THAT  IT   IS   EASY    TO 

PERCEIVE   HE    IS   NO   GENTLEMAN. 

A  SPEECH  from  the  poorest  sort  of  people,  which  always  indicates 
that  the  party  vituperated  is  a  gentleman.  The  very  fact  which 
they  deny,  is  that  which  galls  and  exasperates  them  to  use  this 
language.  The  forbearance  with  which  it  is  usually  received,  is 
a  proof  what  interpretation  the  bystander  sets  upon  it.  Of  a 
kin  to  this,  and  still  less  politic,  are  the  phrases  with  which,  in 
this  street  rhetoric,  they  ply  one  another  more  grossly ; — He  is  a 

poor  creature. — He  has  not  a  rag  to  cover ^c. ;  though  this 

last,  we  confess,  is  more  frequently  applied  by  females  to  females. 
They  do  not  perceive  that  the  satire  glances  upon  themselves.  A 
poor  man,  of  all  things  in  the  world,  should  not  upbraid  an  anta- 
gonist with  poverty.     Are  there  no  other  topics — as,  to  tell  him 

his  father  was  hanged — his  sister,  &c ,  without  exposing  a 

secret,  which  should  be  kept  snug  between  them  ;  and  doing  an 
affront  to  the  order  to  which  they  have  the  honor  equally  to  be- 


144  ELIA. 


long  ?     All  this  while  they  do  not  see  how  the  wealthier  man 
stands  by  and  laughs  in  his  sleeve  at  both. 


V. 

THAT  THE  POOR  COPY  THE  VICES  OF  THE  RICH. 

A  SMOOTH  text  to  the  letter;  and,  preached  from  the  pulpit,  is 
sure  of  a  docile  audience  from  the  pews  lined  with  satin.  It  is 
twice  sitting  upon  velvet  to  a  foolish  squire  to  be  told,  that  he — 
and  not  perverse  nature,  as  the  homilies  would  make  us  imagine, 
is  the  true  cause  of  all  the  irregularities  in  his  parish.  This  is 
striking  at  the  root  of  free-will  indeed,  and  denying  the  originality 
of  sin  in  any  sense.  But  men  are  not  such  implicit  sheep  as  this 
comes  to.  If  the  abstinence  from  evil  on  the  part  of  the  upper 
classes  is  to  derive  itself  from  no  higher  principle  than  the  appre- 
hension of  setting  ill  patterns  to  the  lower,  we  beg  leave  to  dis- 
charge them  from  all  squeamishness  on  that  score  :  they  may 
even  take  their  fill  of  pleasures,  where  they  can  find  them.  The 
Genius  of  Poverty,  hampered  and  straitened  as  it  is,  is  not  so  bar- 
ren of  invention,  but  it  can  trade  upon  the  staple  of  its  own  vice, 
without  drawing  upon  their  capital.  The  poor  are  not  quite  such 
servile  imitators  as  they  take  them  for.  Some  of  them  are  very 
clever  artists  in  their  way.  Here  and  there  we  find  an  original. 
Who  taught  the  poor  to  steal,  to  pilfer  ?  They  did  not  go  to  the 
great  for  schoolmasters  in  these  faculties  surely.  It  is  well  if  in 
some  vices  they  allow  us  to  be — no  copyists.  In  no  other  sense 
is  it  true  that  the  poor  copy  them,  than  as  servants  may  be  said  to 
take  after  their  masters  and  mistresses,  when  they  succeed  to  their 
reversionary  cold  meats.  If  the  master,  from  indisposition  or 
some  other  cause,  neglect  his  food,  the  servant  dines  notwith- 
standing. 

"  O,  but  (some  will  say)  the  force  of  example  is  great."  We 
knew  a  lady  who  was  so  scrupulous  on  this  head,  that  she  would 
put  up  with  the  calls  of  the  most  impertinent  visitor,  rather  than 
let  her  servant  say  she  was  not  at  home,  for  fear  of  teaching  her 
maid  to  tell  an  untruth  ;  and  this  in  the  very  face  of  the  fact, 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  145 

which  she  knew  well  enough,  that  the  wench  was  one  of  ths 
greatest  liars  upon  the  earth  without  teaching  ;  so  much  so,  that 
her  mistress  possibly  never  heard  two  words  of  consecutive  truth 
from  her  in  her  life.  But  nature  must  go  for  nothing  :  example 
.must  be  everything.  This  liar  in  grain,  who  never  opened  her 
mouth  without  a  lie,  must  be  guarded  against  a  remote  inference, 
which  she  (pretty  casuist !)  might  possibly  draw  from  a  form  of 
words — literally  false,  but  essentially  deceiving  no  one — that 
under  some  circumstances  a  fib  might  not  be  so  exceedingly  sin- 
ful— a  fiction,  too,  not  at  all  in  her  own  way,  or  one  that  she 
could  be  suspected  of  adopting,  for  few  servant- wenches  care  to 
be  denied  to  visitors. 

This  word  example  reminds  us  of  another  fine  word  which  is 
in  use  upon  these  occasions — encouragement.  "  People  in  our 
sphere  must  not  be  thought  to  give  encouragement  to  such  pro- 
ceedings." To  such  a  frantic  height  is  this  principle  capable  of 
being  carried,  that  we  have  known  individuals  who  have  thought 
it  within  the  scope  of  their  influence  to  sanction  despair,  and  give 
eclat  to — suicide.  A  domestic  in  the  family  of  a  county  member 
lately  deceased,  from  love,  or  some  unknown  cause,  cut  his  throat, 
but  not  successfully.  The  poor  fellow  was  otherwise  much  loved 
and  respected ;  and  great  interest  was  used  in  his  behalf,  upon  his 
recovery,  that  he  might  be  permitted  to  retain  his  place  ;  his  word 
being  first  pledged,  not  without  some  substantial  sponsors  to  pro- 
mise for  him,  that  the  like  should  never  happen  again.  His  mas- 
ter was  inclinable  to  keep  him,  but  his  mistress  thought  otherwise ; 
and  John  in  the  end  was  dismissed,  her  ladyship  declaring  that 
she  "  could  not  think  of  encouraging  any  such  doings  in  the 
county." 


VI. 

THAT   ENOUGH    IS   AS   GOOD   AS   A    FEAST. 

Not  a  man,  woman,  or  child,  in  ten  miles  round  Guildhall,  who 
really  believes  this  saying.  The  inventor  of  it  did  not  believe  it 
himself.     It  was  made  in  revenge  by  somebody,  who  was  disap- 

PART   II.  11 


146  ELIA. 

pointed  of  a  regale.  It  is  a  vile  cold-scrag-of-mutton  sophism  ;  a 
lie  palmed  upon  the  palate,  which  knows  better  things.  If  nothing 
else  could  be  said  for  a  feast,  this  is  sufficient  that  from  the  su- 
perflux  there  is  usually  something  left  for  the  next  day.  Morally 
interpreted,  it  belongs  to  a  class  of  proverbs  which  have  a  ten- 
dency to  make  us  undervalue  money.  Of  this  cast  are  those  no- 
table observations,  that  money  is  not  health  ;  riches  cannot  pur- 
chase everything  :  the  metaphor  which  makes  gold  to  be  mere 
muck,  with  the  morality  which  traces  fine  clothing  to  the  sheep's 
back,  and  denounces  pearl  as  the  unhandsome  excretion  of  an 
oyster.  Hence,  too,  the  phrase  which  imputes  dirt  to  acres — a 
sophistry  so  barefaced,  that  even  the  literal  sense  of  it  is  true  only 
in  a  wet  season.  This,  and  abundance  of  similar  sage  saws 
assuming  to  inculcate  content,  we  verily  believe  to  have  been  the 
invention  of  some  cunning  borrower,  who  had  designs  upon  the 
purse  of  his  wealthier  neighbor,  which  he  could  only  hope  to 
carry  by  force  of  these  verbal  jugglings.  Translate  any  one  of 
these  sayings  out  of  the  artful  metonymy  which  envelopes  it,  and 
the  trick  is  apparent.  Goodly  legs  and  shoulders  of  mutton,  ex- 
hilarating  cordials,  books,  pictures,  the  opportunities  of  seeing 
foreign  countries,  independence,  heart's  ease,  a  man's  own  time 
to  himself,  are  not  muck — however  we  may  be  pleased  to  scanda- 
lize with  that  appellation  the  faithful  metal  that  provides  them  for 
us. 


VII. 

OF  TWO  DISPUTANTS   THE   WARMEST   IS   GENERALLY  IN  THE  WRONG. 

Our  experience  would  lead  us  to  quite  an  opposite  conclusion. 
Temper,  indeed,  is  no  test  of  truth ;  but  warmth  and  earnestness 
are  a  proof  at  least  of  a  man's  own  conviction  of  the  rectitude  of 
that  which  he  maintains.  Coolness  is  as  often  the  result  of  an 
unprincipled  indifference  to  truth  or  falsehood,  as  of  a  sober  con- 
fidence in  a  man's  own  side  in  a  dispute.  Nothing  is  more  in- 
sulting sometimes  than  the  appearance  of  this  philosophic  temper. 
There  is  little  Titubus,  the  stammering  law-stationer  in  Lincoln's 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  147 

Inn — we  have  seldom  known  this  shrewd  little  fellow  engaged  in 
an  argument  where  we  were  not  convinced  he  had  the  best  of  it, 
if  his  tongue  would  but  fairly  have  seconded  him.  When  he  has 
been  spluttering  excellent  broken  sense  for  an  hour  together 
writhing  and  laboring  to  be  delivered  of  the  point  of  dispute — 
the  very  gist  of  the  controversy  knocking  at  his  teeth,  which  like 
some  obstinate  iron-grating  still  obstructed  its  deliverance — his 
puny  frame  convulsed,  and  face  reddening  all  over  at  an  unfair- 
ness  in  the  logic  which  he  wanted  articulation  to  expose,  it  has 
moved  our  gall  to  see  a  smooth  portly  fellow  of  an  adversary, 
that  cared  not  a  button  for  the  merits  of  the  question,  by  merely 
laying  his  hand  upon  the  head  of  the  stationer,  and  desiring  him 
to  be  calm  (your  tall  disputants  have  always  the  advantage),  with 
a  provoking  sneer  carry  the  argument  clean  from  him  in  the 
opinion  of  all  the  bystanders,  who  have  gone  away  clearly  con- 
vinced that  Titubus  must  have  been  in  the  wrong,  because  he 

was  in  a  passion ;  and  that  Mr. ,  meaning  his  opponent,  is 

one  of  the  fairest  and  at  the  same  time  one  of  the  most  dispas- 
sionate arguers  breathing. 


VIII. 

THAT   VERBAL   ALLUSIONS   ARE   NOT   WIT,    BECAUSE   THEY   WILL 
NOT   BEAR   A   TRANSLATION. 

The  same  might  be  said  of  the  wittiest  local  allusions.  A  cus- 
tom is  sometimes  as  difficult  to  explain  to  a  foreigner  as  a  pun. 
What  would  become  of  a  great  part  of  the  wit  of  the  last  age,  if 
it  were  tried  by  this  test  ?  How  would  certain  topics,  as  alder- 
manity,  cuckoldry,  have  sounded  to  a  Terentian  auditory,  though 
Terence  himself  had  been  alive  to  translate  them  ?  Senator  urha^ 
nus  with  Curruca  to  boot  for  a  synonyme,  would  but  faintly  have 
done  the  business.  Words  involving  nations,  are  hard  enough  to 
render  ;  it  is  too  much  to  expect  us  to  translate  a  sound,  and  give 
an  excellent  version  to  a  jingle.  The  Virgilian  harmony  is  not 
translated,  but  by  substituting  harmonious  sounds  in  another  lan^ 


148  ELIA. 

guage  for  it.  To  Latinise  a  pun,  we  must  seek  ii  pun  in  Latin, 
that  will  answer  to  it ;  as,  to  give  an  idea  of  the  double  endings 
in  Hudibras,  we  must  have  recourse  to  a  similar  practice  in  the 
old  monkish  doggrel.  Dennis,  the  fiercest  oppugner  of  puns  in 
ancient  or  modern  times,  professes  himself  highly  tickled  with  the 
"  a  stick,"  chiming  to  "  ecclesiastic."  Yet  what  is  this  but  a 
species  of  pun,  a  verbal  consonance  ? 


IX. 

THAT   THE   WORST   PUNS   ARE   THE    BEST. 

If  by  worst  be  only  meant  the  most  farfetched  and  startling,  we 
agree  to  it.  A  pun  is  not  bounded  by  the  laws  which  limit  nicer 
wit.  It  is  a  pistol  let  off  at  the  ear :  not  a  feather  to  tickle  the 
intellect.  It  is  an  antic  which  does  not  stand  upon  manners,  but 
comes  bounding  into  the  presence,  and  does  not  show  the  less 
comic  for  being  dragged  in  sometimes  by  the  head  and  shoulders. 
What  though  it  limp  a  little,  or  prove  defective  in  one  leg  ? — all 
the  better.  A  pun  may  easily  be  too  curious  and  artificial.  Who 
has  not  at  one  time  or  other  been  at  a  party  of  professors  (him- 
self perhaps  an  old  offender  in  that  line),  where,  after  ringing  a 
round  of  the  most  ingenious  conceits,  every  man  contributing  his 
shot,  and  some  there  the  most  expert  shooters  of  the  day  ;  after 
making  a  poor  word  run  the  gauntlet  till  it  is  ready  to  drop ; 
after  hunting  and  winding  it  through  all  the  possible  ambages  o^ 
similar  sounds  ;  after  squeezing,  and  hauling,  and  tugging  at  it, 
till  the  very  milk  of  it  will  not  yield  a  drop  further, — suddenly 
some  obscure,  unthought-of  fellow  in  a  corner,  who  was  never 
'prentice  to  the  trade,  whom  the  company  for  very  pity  passed 
over,  as  we  do  by  a  known  poor  man  when  a  money-subscription 
is  going  round,  no  one  calling  on  him  for  his  quota — has  all  at 
once  come  out  with  something  so  whimsical,  yet  so  pertinent ;  so 
brazen  in  its  pretensions,  yet  so  impossible  to  be  denied  ;  so  ex- 
quisitely good,  and  so  deplorably  bad,  at  the  same  time, — that  it 
has  proved  a  Robin  Hood's  shot ;  anything  ulterior  to  that  is 
deij)aired    of;    and   the  party  breaks    up,  unanimously  voting 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  149 

it  to  be  the  very  worst  (that  is,  best)  pun  of  the  evening.  This 
species  of  wit  is  the  better  for  not  being  perfect  in  all  its  parts. 
What  it  gains  in  completeness,  it  loses  in  naturalness.  The  more 
exactly  it  satisfies  the  critical,  the  less  hold  it  has  upon  some  other 
faculties.  The  puns  which  are  the  most  entertaining  are  those 
which  will  least  bear  an  analysis.  Of  this  kind  is  the  following, 
recorded  with  a  sort  of  stigma,  in  one  of  Swift's  Miscellanies. 

An  Oxford  scholar,  meeting  a  porter  who  was  carrying  a  hare 
through  the  streets,  accosts  him  with  this  extraordinary  question : 

"  Prithee,  friend,  is  that  thy  own  hare,  or  a  wig  ?" 

There  is  no  excusing  this,  and  no  resisting  it.  A  man  might 
blur  ten  sides  of  paper  in  attempting  a  defence  of  it  against  a 
critic  who  should  be  laughter-proof.  The  quibble  in  itself  is  not 
considerable.  It  is  only  a  new  turn  given  by  a  little  false  pro- 
nunciation, to  a  very  common,  though  not  very  courteous  inquiry. 
Put  by  one  gentleman  to  another  at  a  dinner-party,  it  would  have 
been  vapid ;  to  the  mistress  of  the  house,  it  would  have  shown 
much  less  wit  than  rudeness.  We  must  take  in  the  totality  of 
time,  place,  and  person  ;  the  pert  look  of  the  inquiring  scholar, 
the  desponding  look  of  the  puzzled  porter  :  the  one  stopping  at 
leisure,  the  other  hurrying  on  with  his  burthen ;  the  innocent 
though  rather  abrupt  tendency  of  the  first  member  of  the  question, 
with  the  utter  and  inextricable  irrelevancy  of  the  second ;  the 
place — a  public  street,  not  favorable  to  frivolous  investigations ; 
the  affrontive  quality  of  the  primitive  inquiry  (the  common  ques- 
tion) invidiously  transferred  to  the  derivative  (the  new  turn  given 
to  it)  in  the  implied  satire ;  namely,  that  few  of  that  tribe  are 
expected  to  eat  of  the  good  things  which  they  carry,  they  being 
in  most  countries  considered  rather  as  the  temporary  trustees 
than  owners  of  such  dainties, — which  the  fellow  was  beginning 
to  understand ;  but  then  the  wig  again  comes  in,  and  he  can 
make  nothing  of  it ;  all  put  together  constitute  a  picture :  Ho- 
garth could  have  made  it  intelligible  on  canvas. 

Yet  nine  out  of  ten  critics  will  pronounce  this  a  very  bad  pun, 
because  of  the  defectiveness  in 'the  concluding  member,  which  is 
its  very  beauty,  and  caistitutes  the  surprise.  The  same  persons 
shall  cry  up  for  admirable  the  cold  quibble  from  Virgil  about  the 


150  ELIA. 

broken  Cremona*  ;  because  it  is  made  out  in  all  its  parts,  and 
leaves  nothing  to  the  imagination.  We  venture  to  call  it  cold  ; 
because,  of  thousands  who  have  admired  it,  it  would  be  difficult 
to  find  one  who  has  heartily  chuckled  at  it.  As  appealing  to  the 
judgment  merely  (setting  the  risible  faculty  aside),  we  must  pro- 
nounce it  a  monument  of  curious  felicity.  But  as  some  stories 
are  said  to  be  too  good  to  be  true,  it  may  with  equal  truth  be  as- 
•serted  of  this  biverbal  allusion,  that  it  is  too  good  to  be  natural. 
One  cannot  help  suspecting  that  the  incident  was  invented  to  fit 
the  line.  It  would  have  been  better  had  it  been  less  perfect 
Like  some  Virgilian  hemistichs,  it  has  suftered  by  filling  up. 
The  nimium  Vicina  was  enough  in  conscience  ;  the  CremoruE  af- 
terwards loads  it.  It  is  in  fact  a  double  pun ;  and  we  have 
always  observed  that  a  superfoetation  in  this  sort  of  wit  is  dan- 
gerous. When  a  man  has  said  a  good  thing,  it  is  seldom  politic 
to  follow  it  up.  We  do  not  care  to  be  cheated  a  second  time  ;  or, 
perhaps,  the  mind  of  man  (with  reverence  be  it  spoken)  is  not 
capacious  enough  to  lodge  two  puns  at  a  time.  The  impression, 
to  be  forcible,  must  be  simultaneous  and  undivided. 


X. 

THAT   HANDSOME    IS   THAT    HANDSOME    DOES. 

Those  who  use  this  proverb  can  never  have  seen  Mrs.  Conrady. 

The  soul,  if  we  may  believe  Plotinus,  is  a  ray  from  the  celes- 
tial beauty.  As  she  partakes  more  or  less  of  this  heavenly  light, 
she  informs,  with  corresponding  characters,  the  fleshly  tenement 
which  she  chooses,  and  frames  to  herself  a  suitable  mansion. 

All  which  only  proves  that  the  soul  of  Mrs.  Conrady,  in  her 
pre-existent  state,  was  no  great  judge  of  architecture. 

To  the  same  effect  in  a  Hymn  in  honor  of  Beauty,  divine 
Spenser  platonizing  sings  : — 


-Every  spirit  as  it  is  more  pure, 


And  hath  in  it  the  more  of  heavenly  light, 
*  Swift. 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  151 

So  it  the  fairer  body  doth  procure 
To  habit  in,  and  it  more  fairly  dight 
With  cheerful  grace  and  amiable  sight. 
For  of  the  soul  the  body  form  doth  take : 
For  soul  is  form  and  doth  the  body  make." 

But  Spenser  it  is  clear  never  saw  Mrs.  Conrady. 

These  poets,  we  find,  are  no  safe  guides  in  philosophy ;  for 
here,  in  his  very  next  stanza  but  one,  is  a  saving  clause,  which 
throws  us  all  out  again,  and  leaves  us  as  much  to  seek  as  ever : — 

"  Yet  oft  it  falls,  that  many  a  gentle  mind 
Dwells  in  deformed  tabernacle  drown'd. 
Either  by  chance,  against  the  course  of  kind. 
Or  through  unaptness  in  the  substance  found. 
Which  it  assumed  of  some  stubborn  ground, 
That  will  not  yield  unto  her  form's  direction,  , 

But  is  performed  with  some  foul  imperfection.'* 

From  which  it  would  follow,  that  Spenser  had  seen  somebody 
like  Mrs.  Conrady. 

The  spirit  of  this  good  lady — her  previous  auima — must  have 
stumbled  upon  one  of  these  untoward  tabernacles  which  he  speaks 
of.  A  more  rebellious  commodity  of  clay  for  a  ground,  as  the 
poet  calls  it,  no  gentle  mind — and  sure  hers  is  one  of  the  gentlest 
— ever  had  to  deal  with- 

Pondering  upon  her  inexplicable  visage — inexplicable,  we 
mean,  but  by  this  modification  of  the  theory — we  have  come  to  a 
conclusion  that,  if  one  must  be  plain,  it  is  better  to  be  plain  all 
over  than  amidst  a  tolerable  residue  of  features,  to  hang  out  one 
that  shall  be  exceptionable.  No  one  can  say  of  Mrs.  Conrady's 
countenance  that  it  would  be  better  if  she  had  but  a  nose.  It  is 
impossible  to  pull  her  to  pieces  in  this  manner.  We  have  seen 
the  most  malicious  beauties  of  her  own  sex  baffled  in  the  attempt 
at  a  selection.  The  tout-ensemble  defies  particularizing.  It  is  too 
complete — too  consistent,  as  we  may  say — to  admit  of  these  in- 
vidious reservations.  It  is  not  as  if  some  Apelles  had  picked  out 
here  a  lip — and  there  a  chin — out  of  the  collected  ugliness  of 
Greece,  to  frame  a  mode  by.  It  is  a  symmetrical  whole.  We 
chal^ entire  the  minutest  connoisseur  to  cavil  at  any  part  or  parcel 


152  ELIA. 

of  the  countenance  in  question ;  to  say  that  this,  or  that,  is  im- 
properly placed.  We  are  convinced  that  true  ugliness,  no  less 
than  is  affirmed  of  true  beauty,  is  the  result  of  harmony.  Like 
that  too  it  reigns  without  a  competitor.  No  one  ever  saw  Mrs. 
Conrady,  without  pronouncing  her  to  be  the  plainest  woman  that 
he  ever  met  with  in  the  course  of  his  life.  The  first  time  that 
you  are  indulged  with  a  sight  of  her  face,  is  an  era  in  your  exist- 
ence ever  after.  You  are  glad  to  have  seen  it — like  Stonehenge. 
No  one  can  pretend  to  forget  it.  No  one  ever  apologised  to  her 
for  meeting  her  in  the  street  on  such  a  day  and  not  knowing  her : 
the  pretext  would  be  too  bare.  Nobody  can  mistake  her  for  ano- 
ther. Nobody  can  say  of  her,  "  I  think  I  have  seen  that  face 
somewhere,  but  I  cannot  call  to  mind  where."  You  must  remem- 
ber that  in  such  a  parlor  it  first  struck  you — like  a  bust.  You 
wondered  where  the  owner  of  the  house  had  picked  it  up.  You 
wondered  more  when  it  began  to  move  its  lips — so  mildly  too  ! 
No  one  ever  thought  of  asking  her  to  sit  for  her  picture.  Lock- 
ets are  for  remembrance  ;  and  it  would  be  clearly  superfluous  to 
hang  an  image  at  your  heart,  which  once  seen,  can  never  be  out 
of  it.  It  is  not  a  mean  face  either ;.  its  entire  originality  pre- 
cludes that.  Neither  is  it  of  that  order  of  plain  faces  which  im- 
prove upon  acquaintance.  Some  very  good  but  ordinary  people, 
by  an  unwearied  perseverance  in  good  offices,  put  a  cheat  upon 
our  eyes  ;  juggle  our  senses  out  of  their  natural  impressions;  and 
set  us  upon  discovering  good  indications  in  a  countenance,  which  af 
first  sight  promised  nothing  less.  We  detect  gentleness,  which  had 
escaped  us,  lurking  about  an  under  lip.  But  when  Mrs.  Conrady 
has  done  you  a  service,  her  face  remains  the  same ;  when  she  has 
done  you  a  thousand,  and  you  know  that  she  is  ready  to  double 
the  number,  still  it  is  that  individual  face.  Neither  can  you  say 
of  it,  that  it  would  be  a  good  face  if  it  were  not  marked  by  the 
small-pox — a  compliment  which  is  always  more  admissive  than 
excusatory — for  either  Mrs.  Conrady  never  had  the  small-pox : 
or,  as  we  say,  took  it  kindly.  No,  it  stands  upon  its  own  merits 
fairly.  There  it  is.  It  is  her  mark,  her  token  ;  that  which  she 
is  known  by. 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  153 

XI. 

THAT   WE   MUST   NOT    LOOK   A    GIFT-HORSE   IN   THE   MOUTH. 

Nor  a  lady's  age  in  the  parish  register.  We  hope  we  have  more 
delicacy  than  to  do  either  ;  but  some  faces  spare  us  the  trouble  of 
these  dental  inquiries.  And  what  if  the  beast,  which  my  friend 
would  force  upon  my  acceptance,  prove,  upon  the  face  of  it,  a 
sorry  Rosinante,  a  lean,  ill-favored  jade,  whom  no  gentleman 
could  think  of  setting  up  in  his  stables  ?  Must  I,  rather  than  not 
be  obliged  to  my  friend,  make  her  a  companion  to  Eclipse  or 
Lightfoot  ?  A  horse-giver,  no  more  than  a  horse-seller,  has  a 
right  to  palm  his  spavined  article  upon  us  for  good  ware.  An 
equivalent  is  expected  in  either  case ;  and,  with  my  own  good 
will,  I  would  no  more  be  cheated  out  of  my  thanks  than  out  of 
my  money.  Some  people  have  a  knack  of  putting  upon  you  gifts 
of  no  real  value,  to  engage  you  to  substantial  gratitude.  We 
thank  them  for  nothing.  Our  friend  Mitis  carries  this  humor  of 
never  refusing  a  present,  to  the  very  point  of  absurdity — if  it  were 
possible  to  couple  the  ridiculous  with  so  much  mistaken  delicacy, 
and  real  good-nature.  Not  an  apartment  in  his  fine  house  (and 
he  has  a  true  taste  in  household  decorations),  but  is  stuffed  up  with 
some  preposterous  print  or  mirror — the  worst  adapted  to  his 
panels  that  may  be — the  presents  of  his  friends  that  know  his 
weakness  ;  while  his  noble  Vandykes  are  displaced  to  make  room 
for  a  set  of  daubs,  the  work  of  some  wretched  artist  of  his  ac- 
quaintance, who,  having  had  them  returned  upon  his  hands  for 
bad  likenesses,  finds  his  account  in  bestowing  them  here  gratis. 
The  good  creature  has  not  the  heart  to  mortify  the  painter  at  the 
expense  of  an  honest  refusal.  It  is  pleasant  (if  it  did  not  vex  one 
at  the  same  time)  to  see  him  sitting  in  his  dining  parlor,  surround- 
ed with  obscure  aunts  and  cousins  to  God  knows  whom,  while  the 
true  Lady  Marys  and  Lady  Bettys  of  his  own  honorable  family, 
in  favor  to  these  adopted  frights,  are  consigned  to  the  stair-case 
and  the  lumber-room.  In  like  manner  his  goodly  shelves  are  one 
by  one  stripped  of  his  favorite  old  authors,  to  give  place  to  a  col- 
lection of  presentation  copies — ^the  flour  and  bran  of  modern  poe- 
try.    A  presentation  copy,  reader,^ — if  haply  you  are  yet  innocent 


154  ELIA. 

of  such  favors — is  a  copy  of  a  book  which  does  not  sell,  sent  you 
by  the  author,  with  his  foolish  autograph  at  the  beginning  of  it ; 
for  which,  if  a  stranger,  he  only  demands  your  friendship ;  if  a 
brother  author,  he  expects  from  you  a  book  of  yours,  which  does 
sell,  in  return.  We  can  speak  to  experience,  having  by  us  a  tole- 
rable assortment  of  these  gift-horses.  Not  to  ride  a  metaphor  to 
death — we  are  willing  to  acknowledge,  that  in  some  gifts  there  is 
sense.  A  duplicate  out  of  a  friend's  library  (where  he  has  more 
than  one  copy  of  a  rare  author)  is  intelligible.  There  are  favors, 
short  of  the  pecuniary — a  thing  not  fit  to  be  hinted  at  among  gen- 
tlemen— which  confer  as  much  grace  upon  the  acceptor  as  the 
offerer ;  the  kind,  we  confess,  which  is  most  to  our  palate,  is  of 
those  little  conciliatory  missives,  which  for  their  vehicle  generally 
choose  a  hamper — little  odd  presents  of  game,  fruit,  perhaps  wine 
— though  it  is  essential  to  the  delicacy  of  the  latter,  that  it  be 
home-made.  We  love  to  have  our  friend  in  the  country  sitting 
thus  at  our  table  by  proxy ;  to  apprehend  his  presence  (though  a 
hundred  miles  may  be  between  us)  by  a  turkey,  whose  goodly 
aspect  reflect?  to  us  his  "  plump  corpusculum  ;"  to  taste  him  in 
grouse  or  woo.lcock :  to  feel  him  gliding  down  in  the  toast  pecu- 
liar to  the  latte*;  to  concorporate  him  in  a  slice  of  Canterbury 
brawn.  This  it,  indeed  to  have  him  with  ourselves  ;  to  know  him 
intimately ;  such  participation  is  methinks  unitive,  as  the  old  theo- 
logians phrase  it.  For  these  considerations  we  should  be  sorry 
if  certain  restricti\e  regulations,  which  are  thought  to  bear  hard 
upon  the  peasantry  of  this  country,  were  entirely  done  away 
with.  A  hare,  as  the  law  now  stands,  makes  many  friends. 
Caius  conciliates  Titips  (knowing  his  gout)  with  a  leash  of  par- 
tridges. Titius  (suspecting  his  partiality  for  them)  passes  them 
to  Lucius ;  who  in  his  turn,  preferring  his  friend's  relish  to  his 
own,  makes  them  over  to  Marcius ;  till  in  their  ever  widening 
progress,  and  round  of  unconscious  circum-migration,  they  distri- 
bute the  seeds  of  harmony  over  half  the  parish.  We  are  well  dis- 
posed to  this  kind  of  sensible  remembrances  ;  and  are  the  less 
apt  to  be  taken  by  those  little  airy  tokens — impalpable  to  the  pal- 
ate— which,  under  the  name  of  rings,  lockets,  keep-sakes,  amuse 
some  people's  fancy  mightily.  We  could  never  away  with  these 
indigestible  trifles.  They  are  the  very  kickshaws  and  foppery  of 
friendship. 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  155 

XII. 

THAT  HOME  IS  HOME  THOUGH  IT  IS  NEVEE  SO  HOMELY. 

Homes  there  are,  we  are  sure,  that  are  no  homes ;  the  home  of 
the  very  poor  man,  and  another  which  we  shall  speak  to  presently. 
Crowded  places  of  cheap  entertainment,  and  the  benches  of  ale- 
houses, if  they  could  speak,  might  bear  mournful  testimony  to  the 
first.  To  them  the  very  poor  man  resorts  for  an  image  of  the 
home  which  he  cannot  find  at  home.  For  a  starved  grate,  and  a 
scanty  firing,  that  is  not  enough  to  keep  alive  the  natural  heat  in 
the  fingers  of  so  many  shivering  children  with  their  mother,  he 
finds  in  the  depths  of  winter  always  a  blazing  hearth,  and  a  hob 
to  warm  his  pittance  of  beer  by.  Instead  of  the  clamors  of  a  wife, 
made  gaunt  by  famishing,  he  meets  with  a  cheerful  attendance 
beyond  the  merits  of  the  trifle  which  he  can  afford  to  spend.  He 
has  companions  which  his  home  denies  him,  for  the  very  poor  man 
has  no  visitors.  He  can  look  into  the  goings  on  of  the  world,  and 
speak  a  little  to  politics.  At  home  there  are  no  politics  stirring, 
but  the  domestic.  All  interests,  real  or  imaginary,  all  topics  that 
should  expand  the  mind  of  man,  and  connect  him  to  a  sympathy 
with  general  existence,  are  crushed  in  the  absorbing  considera- 
tion of  food  to  be  obtained  for  the  family.  Beyond  the  price  of 
bread,  news  is  senseless  and  impertinent.  At  home  there  is  no 
larder.  Here  there  is  at  least  a  show  of  plenty ;  and  while  he 
cooks  his  lean  scrap  of  butchers'  meat  before  the  common  bars,  or 
munches  his  humbler  cold  viands,  his  relishing  bread  and  cheese 
with  an  onion,  in  a  corner,  where  no  one  reflects  upon  his  pover- 
ty, he  has  a  sight  of  the  substantial  joint  providing  for  the  land- 
lord and  his  family.  He  takes  an  interest  in  the  dressing  of  it ; 
and  while  he  assists  in  removing  the  trivet  from  the  fire,  he  feels 
that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  beef  and  cabbage,  which  he  was  be- 
ginning to  forget  at  home.  All  this  while  he  deserts  his  wife  and 
children.  But  what  wife  and  what  children  ?  Prosperous  men, 
who  object  to  this  desertion,  image  to  themselves  some  clean  con- 
tented family  like  that  which  they  go  home  to.  But  look  at  the 
countenance  of  the  poor  wives  who  follow  and  persecute  their 
good-man  to  the  door  of  the  public-house,  which  he  is  ab  ut  to 


156  ELIA, 

enter,  when  something  like  shame  would  restrain  him,  if  stronger 
misery  did  not  induce  him  to  pass  the  threshold.  That  face,  ground 
by  want,  in  which  every  cheerful,  every  conversable  lineament 
has  been  long  effaced  by  misery, — is  that  a  face  to  stay  at  home 
with  ?  is  it  more  a  woman,  or  a  wild  cat  ?  alas !  it  is  the  face  of 
the  wife  of  his  youth,  that  once  smiled  upon  him.  It  can  smile 
no  longer.  What  comforts  can  it  share  ?  what  burdens  can  it 
lighten  ?  Oh,  'tis  a  fine  thing  to  talk  of  the  humble  meal  shared 
together !  But  what  if  there  be  no  bread  in  the  cupboard  ?  The 
innocent  prattle  of  his  children  takes  out  the  sting  of  a  man's 
poverty.  But  the  children  of  the  very  poor  do  not  prattle.  It  is 
none  of  the  least  frightful  features  in  that  condition,  that  there  is 
no  childishness  in  its  dwellings.  Poor  people,  said  a  sensible  old 
nurse  to  us  once,  do  not  bring  up  their  children  ;  they  drag  them 
up.  The  little  careless  darling  of  the  wealthier  nursery,  in  their 
hovel,  is  transformed  betimes  into  a  premature  reflecting  person. 
No  one  has  time  to  dandle  it,  no  one  thinks  it  worth  while  to  coax 
it,  to  soothe  it,  to  toss  it  up  and  down,  to  humor  it.  There  is  none 
to  kiss  away  its  tears.  If  it  cries,  it  can  only  be  beaten.  It  has 
been  prettily  said,  that  "  a  babe  is  fed  with  milk  and  praise."  But 
the  aliment  of  this  poor  babe  was  thin,  unnourishing ;  the  return 
to  its  little  baby-tricks,  and  efforts  to  engage  attention,  bitter  cease- 
less objurgation.  It  never  had  a  toy,  or  knew  what  a  coral 
meant.  It  grew  up  without  the  lullaby  of  nurses,  it  was  a 
stranger  to  the  patient  fondle,  the  hushing  caress,  the  attracting 
novelty,  the  costlier  plaything,  or  the  cheaper  off-hand  contrivance 
to  divert  the  child  ;  the  prattled  nonsense  (best  sense  to  it),  the 
wise  impertinences,  the  wholesome  lies,  the  apt  story  interposed, 
that  puts  a  stop  to  present  sufferings,  and  awakens  the  passions  of 
young  wonder.  It  was  never  sung  to — no  one  ever  told  to  it  a  tale 
of  the  nursery.  It  was  dragged  up,  to  live  or  to  die  as  it  happened. 
It  had  no  young  dreams.  It  broke  at  once  into  the  iron  realities 
of  life.  A  child  exists  not  for  the  very  poor  as  any  object  of  dal- 
liance ;  it  is  only  another  mouth  to  be  fed,  a  pair  of  little  hands 
to  be  betimes  inured  to  labor.  It  is  the  rival,  till  it  can  be  the 
co-operator,  for  food  with  the  parent.  It  is  never  his  mirth,  his 
diversion,  his  solace  :  it  never  makes  him  young  again,  with  re- 
call! ig  his  young  times.     The  children  of  the  very  poor  have 


O  ULAR  FALLACIES.  157 

no  young  times.  It  makes  the  very  heart  bleed  to  overhear  the 
casual  street-talk  between  a  poor  woman  and  her  little  girl,  a  wo- 
man of  the  better  sort  of  poor,  in  a  condition  rather  above  the 
squalid  beings  which  we  have  been  contemplating,  It  is  not  of 
toys,  of  nursery  books,  of  summer  holidays  (fitting  that  age) ;  of 
the  promised  sight  or  play ;  of  praised  sufficiency  at  school.  It 
is  of  mangling  and  clear-starching,  of  the  price  of  coals,  or  of 
potatoes.  The  questions  of  the  child,  that  should  be  the  very 
outpourings  of  curiosity  in  idleness,  are  marked  with  forecast  and 
melancholy  providence.  It  has  come  to  be  a  woman, — before  it 
was  a  child.  It  has  learned  to  go  to  market ;  it  chaffers,  it  hag- 
gles, it  envies,  it  murmurs  ;  it  is  knowing,  acute,  sharpened ;  it 
never  prattles.  Had  we  not  reason  to  say,  that  the  home  of  the 
very  poor  is  no  home  ? 

There  is  yet  another  home,  which  we  are  constrained  to  deny 
to  be  one.  It  has  a  larder,  which  the  home  of  the  poor  man  wants ; 
its  fireside  conveniences,  of  which  the  poor  dream  not.  But  with 
all  this,  it  is  no  home.  It  is — the  house  of  the  man  that  is  infested 
with  many  visitors.  May  we  be  branded  for  the  veriest  churl,  if 
we  deny  our  heart  to  the  many  noble-hearted  friends  that  at 
times  exchange  their  dwellings  for  our  poor  roof!  It  is  not  of 
guests  that  we  complain,  but  of  endless,  purposeless  visitants ; 
droppers  in,  as  they  are  called.  We  sometimes  wonder  from  what 
sky  they  fall.  It  is  the  very  error  of  the  position  of  our  lodging  ; 
its  horoscopy  was  ill-calculated,  being  just  situate  in  a  medium — 
a  plaguy  suburban  mid-space — fitted  to  catch  idlers  from  town  or 
country.  We  are  older  than  we  were,  and  age  is  easily  put  out  of 
its  way.  We  have  fewer  sands  in  our  glass  to  reckon  upon,  and 
we  cannot  brook  to  see  them  drop  in  endlessly  succeeding  imper- 
tinences. At  our  time  of  life,  to  be  alone  sometimes  is  as  needful 
as  sleep.  It  is  the  refreshing  sleep  of  the  day.  The  growing  in- 
firmities of  age  manifest  themselves  in  nothing  more  strongly,  than 
in  an  inveterate  dislike  of  interruption.  The  thing  which  we  are 
doing,  we  wish  to  be  permitted  to  do.  We  have  neither  much 
knowledge  nor  devices  ;  but  there  are  fewer  in  the  place  to  which 
we  hasten.  We  are  not  willingly  put  out  of  our  way,  even  at  a 
game  of  nine-pins.  While  youth  was,  we  had  vast  reversions  in 
time  future ;  we  are  reduced  to  a  present  pittance,  and  obliged  to 


158  ELIA. 

economise  in  that  article.  We  bleed  away  our  moments  now  as 
hardly  as  our  ducats.  We  cannot  bear  to  have  our  thin  ward- 
robe eaten  and  fretted  into  by  moths.  We  are  willing  to  barter 
our  good  time  with  a  friend,  who  gives  us  in  exchange  his  own. 
Herein  is  the  distinction  between  the  genuine  guest  and  the  visit- 
ant. This  latter  takes  your  good  time,  and  gives  you  his  bad  in 
exchange.  The  guest  is  domestic  to  you  as  your  good  cat,  or 
household  bird ;  the  visitant  is  your  fly,  that  flaps  in  at  your  win- 
dow, and  out  again,  leaving  nothing  but  a  sense  of  disturbance, 
and  victuals  spoiled.  The  inferior  functions  of  life  begin  to  move 
heavily.  We  cannot  concoct  our  food  with  interruptions.  Our 
chief  meal,  to  be  nutritive,  must  be  solitary.  With  difficulty  we 
can  eat  before  a  guest ;  and  never  understood  what  the  relish  of 
public  feasting  meant.  Meats  have  no  savor,  nor  digestion  fair 
play,  in  a  crowd.  The  unexpected  coming-in  of  a  visitant  stops 
the  machine.  There  is  a  punctual  generation  who  time  their  calls 
to  the  precise  commencement  of  your  dining-hour — not  to  eat — 
but  to  see  you  eat.  Our  knife  and  fork  drop  instinctively,  and  we 
feel  that  we  have  swallowed  our  latest  morsel.  Others  again 
show  their  genius,  as  we  have  said,  in  knocking  the  moment  you 
have  just  sat  down  to  a  book.  They  have  a  peculiar  compassion- 
ate sneer,  with  which  they  "  hope  that  they  do  not  interrupt  your 
studies."  Though  they  flutter  off  the  next  moment,  to  carry  their 
impertinences  to  the  nearest  student  that  they  can  call  their  friend, 
the  tone  of  the  book  is  spoiled ;  we  shut  the  leaves,  and,  with 
Dante's  lovers,  read  no  more  that  day.  It  were  well  if  the  effect 
of  intrusion  were  simply  co-extensive  with  its  presence  ;  but  it 
mars  all  the  good  hours  afterwards.  These  scratches  in  appear- 
ance leave  an  orifice  that  closes  not  hastily.  "  It  is  a  prostitution 
of  the  bravery  of  friendship,"  says  worthy  Bishop  Taylor,  "  to 
spend  it  upon  impertinent  people,  who  are,  it  may  be,  loads  to 
their  families,  but  can  never  ease  my  loads."  This  is  the  secret 
of  their  gaddings,  their  visits,  and  morning  calls.  They  too  have 
homes,  which  are — no  homes. 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  159 

XIII. 

THAT  YOU  MUST  LOVE  ME  AND  LOVE  MY  DOG. 

"  Good  sir,  or  madam — as  it  may  be — we  most  willingly  embrace 
the  offer  of  your  friendship.  We  have  long  known  your  excellent 
qualities.  We  have  wished  to  have  you  nearer  to  us ;  to  hold 
you  within  the  very  innermost  fold  of  our  heart.  We  can  have 
no  reserve  towards  a  person  of  your  open  and  noble  nature.  The 
frankness  of  your  humor  suits  us  exactly.  We  have  been  long 
looking  for  such  a  friend.  Quick — let  us  disburthen  our  troubles 
into  each  other's  bosoms — let  us  make  our  single  joys  shine  by 
reduplication — But  yap,  yap,  yap  !  what  is  this  confounded  cur  ? 
he  has  fastened  his  tooth,  which  is  none  of  the  bluntest,  just  in  the 
fleshy  part  of  my  leg." 

"It  is  my  dog,  sir.  You  must  love  him  for  my  sake.  Here, 
Test— Test—Test !" 

"But  he  has  bitten  me." 

"  Ay,  that  he  is  apt  to  do,  till  you  are  better  acquainted  with 
him.     I  have  had  him  three  years.     He  never  bites  me." 

Yap,  yap,  yap! — "  He  is  at  it  again." 

"  Oh,  sir,  you  must  not  kick  him.  He  does  not  like  to  be 
kicked.  I  expect  my  dog  to  be  treated  with  all  the  respect  due 
to  myself." 

"  But  do  you  always  take  him  out  with  you,  when  you  go  a 
friendship-hunting  ?" 

"  Invariably.  'Tis  the  sweetest,  prettiest,  best-conditioned 
animal.  I  call  him  my  test — ^*Jie  touchstone  by  which  to  try  a 
friend.  No  one  can  properly  be  said  to  love  me,  who  does  not 
love  him." 

"  Excuse  us,  dear  sir — or  madam,  aforesaid — if  upon  further 
consideration  we  are  obliged  to  decline  the  otherwise  invaluable 
ofler  of  your  friendship.     We  do  not  like  dogs." 

"  Mighty  well,  sir — you  know  the  conditions — you  may  have 
worse  offers.     Come  along,  Test.'^ 

The  above  dialogue  is  not  so  imaginary,  but  that,  in  the  inter- 
course of  life,  we  have  had  frequent  occasions  of  breaking  off  an 
agreeable  intimacy  by  reason  of  these  canine  appendages.    They 


160  ELIA. 

do  not  always  come  in  the  shape  of  dogs  ;  they  sometimes  wear 
the  more  plausible  and  human  character  of  kinsfolk,  near  ac- 
quaintances, my  friend's  friend,  his  partner,  his  wife,  or  his 
children.  We  could  never  yet  form  a  friendship — not  to  speak 
of  more  delicate  correspondence — however  much  to  our  taste, 
without  the  intervention  of  some  third  anomaly,  some  impertinent 
clog  affixed  to  the  relation — the  understood  dog  in  the  proverb. 
The  good  things  of  life  are  not  to  be  had  singly,  but  come  to  us 
with  a  mixture  ;  like  a  school-boy's  holiday,  with  a  task  affixed 
to  the  tail  of  it.  What  a  delightful  companion  is  *  *  *  *,  if  he 
did  not  always  bring  his  tall  cousin  with  him  !  He  seems  to  grow 
with  him  ;  like  some  of  those  double  births  which  we  remember  to 
have  read  of  with  such  wonder  and  delight  in  the  old  "  Athenian 
Oracle,"  where  Swift  commenced  author  by  writing  Pindaric 
Odes  (what  a  beginning  for  him !)  upon  Sir  William  Temple. 
There  is  the  picture  of  the  brother,  with  the  little  brother  peeping 
out  at  his  shoulder ;  a  species  of  fraternity,  which  we  have  no 
name  of  kin  close  enough  to  comprehend.  When  *  *  *  *  comes, 
poking  in  his  head  and  shoulder  into  your  room,  as  if  to  feel  his 
entry,  you  think,  surely  you  have  now  got  him  to  yourself — what 
a  three  hours'  chat  we  shall  have  ? — but  ever  in  the  haunch  of 
him,  and  before  his  diffident  body  is  well  disclosed  in  your  apart- 
ment, appears  the  haunting  shadow  of  the  cousin,  over-peering  his 
modest  kinsman,  and  sure  to  overlay  the  expected  good  talk  with 
his  insufferable  procerity  of  stature,  and  uncorresponding  dwarfish- 
ness  of  observation.  Misfortunes  seldom  come  alone.  'Tis  hard 
when  a  blessing  comes  accompanied.  Cannot  we  like  Sempro- 
nia,  without  sitting  down  to  chess  with  her  eternal  brother  ?  or 
know  Sulpicia,  without  knowing  all  the  round  of  her  card-playing 
relations? — must  my  friend's  brethren  of  necessity  be  mine  also? 
must  we  be  hand  and  glove  with  Dick  Selby  the  parson,  or  Jack 
Selby  the  calico-printer,  because  W.  S..  who  is  neither,  but  a 
ripe  wit  and  a  critic,  has  the  misfortune  to  claim  a  common 
parentage  with  them  ?  Let  him  lay  down  his  brothers ;  and  'tis 
odds  but  we  will  cast  him  in  a  pair  of  ours  (we  have  a  superflux) 
to  balance  the  concession.  Let  F.  H.  lay  down  his  garrulous 
uncle  ;  and  Honorius  dismiss  his  vapid  wife,  and  superfluous 
establishment  of  six  boys :  things  belween  boy  and  manhood — ^too 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  161 

ripe  for  play,  too  raw  for  conversation — that  come  in,  impudently 
staring  their  father's  old  friend  out  of  countenance;  and  will 
neither  aid,  nor  let  alone,  the  conference  ;  that  we  may  once  more 
meet  upon  equal  terms,  as  we  were  wont  to  do  in  the  disengaged 
state  of  bachelorhood. 

It  is  well  if  your  friend  or  mistress  be  content  with  these  cani- 
cular probations.  Few  young  ladies  but  in  this  sense  keep  a  dog. 
But  when  Rutilia  hounds  at  you  her  tiger  aunt ;  or  Respina  expects 
you  to  cherish  and  fondle  her  viper  sister,  whom  she  has  prepos- 
terously taken  into  her  bosom,  to  try  stinging  conclusions  upon 
your  constancy ;  they  must  not  complain  if  the  house  be  rather 
thin  of  suitors.  Scylla  must  have  broken  off  many  excellent 
matches  in  her  time,  if  she  insisted  upon  all  that  loved  her,  loving 
her  dogs  also. 

An  excellent  story  to  this  moral  is  told  of  Merry,  of  Delia 
Cruscan  memory.  In  tender  youth  he  loved  and  courted  a 
modest  appanage  to  the  Opera, — in  truth  a  dancer, — who  had  won 
him  by  the  artless  contrast  between  her  manners  and  situation. 
She  seemed  to  him  a  native  violet,  that  had  been  transplanted  by 
some  rude  accident  into  that  exotic  and  artificial  hotbed.  Nor,  in 
truth,  was  she  less  genuine  and  sincere  than  she  appeared  to  him. 
He  wooed  and  won  his  flower.  Only  for  appearance'  sake,  and 
for  due  honor  to  the  bride's  relations,  she  craved  that  she  might 
have  the  attendance  of  her  friends  and  kindred  at  the  approaching 
solemnity.  The  request  was  too  amiable  not  to  be  conceded :  and 
in  this  solicitude  for  conciliating  the  good-will  of  mere  relations, 
he  found  a  presage  of  her  superior  attentions  to  himself,  when  the 
golden  shaft  should  have  "  killed  the  flock  of  all  affections  else." 
The  morning  came  :  and  at  the  Star  and  Garter,  Richmond — the 
place  appointed  for  the  breakfasting — accompanied  with  one 
English  friend,  he  impatiently  awaited  what  reinforcements  the 
bride  should  bring  to  grace  the  ceremony.  A  rich  muster  she  had 
made.  They  came  in  six  coaches — ^the  whole  corps  du  uallet — 
French,  Italian,  men  and  women.  Monsieur  de  B.,  the  famous 
pirouetter  of  the  day,  led  his  fair  spouse,  but  craggy,  from  the 
banks  of  the  Seine.  The  Prima  Donna  had  sent  her  excuse. 
But  the  first  and  second  Buffa  were  there ;  and  Signor  Sc — ,  and 
Signora  Ch — ,  and  Madame  V — ,  with  a  countless  cavalcade 

PART  II.  12 


162  ELIA. 

besides  of  chorusers,  figurantes !  at  the  sight  of  whom  Merry 
afterwards  declared,  that  "  then  for  the  first  time  it  struck  him 
seriously,  that  he  was  about  to  marry — a  dancer."  But  there 
was  no  help  for  it.  Besides,  it  was  her  day ;  these  were,  in  fact, 
her  friends  and  kinsfolk.  The  assemblage,  though  whimsical, 
was  all  very  natural.  But  when  the  bride — handing  out  of  the  last 
coach  a  still  more  extraordinary  figure  than  the  rest — presented 
to  him  as  her  father — the  gentleman  that  was  to  give  her  away — 
no  less  a  person  than  Signor  Delpini  himself — with  a  sort  of  pride, 
as  much  as  to  say.  See  what  I  have  brought  to  do  us  honor  ! — the 
thought  of  so  extraordinary  a  paternity  quite  overcame  him ;  and 
slipping  away  under  some  pretence  from  the  bride  and  her  mot- 
ley adherents,  poor  Merry  took  horse  from  the  backyard  to  the 
nearest  sea-coast,  from  which,  shipping  himself  to  America,  he 
shortly  afterwards  consoled  himself  with  a  more  congenial  match 
in  the  person  of  Miss  Brunton ;  relieved  from  his  intended  clown 
father,  and  a  bevy  of  painted  buffas  for  bridemaids. 


XIV. 

THAT   WE    SHOULD   RISE    W^ITH   THE    LARK. 

At  what  precise  minute  that  little  airy  musician  doffs  his  night 
gear,  and  prepares  to  tune  up  his  unseasonable  matins,  we  are 
not  naturalists  enough  to  determine.  But  for  a  mere  human  gen- 
tleman— that  has  no  orchestra  business  to  call  him  from  his  warm 
bed  to  such  preposterous  exercises — we  take  ten,  or  half  after  ten 
(eleven,  of  course,  during  this  Christmas  solstice),  to  be  the  very 
earliest  hour  at  which  he  can  begin  to  think  of  abandoning  his  pillow. 
To  think  of  it,  we  say  ;  for  to  do  it  in  earnest  requires  another  half 
hour's  good  consideration.  Not  but  there  are  pretty  sun- risings, 
as  we  are  told,  and  such  like  gawds,  abroad  in  the  world,  in 
summer-time  especially,  some  hours  before  what  we  have  assigned ; 
which  a  gentleman  may  see,  as  they  say,  only  for  getting  up. 
But  having  been  tempted  once  or  twice,  in  earlier  life,  to  assist  at 
those  ceremonies,  we  confess  our  curiosity  abated.     We  are  no 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  16S 

longer  ambitious  of  being  the  sun's  courtiers,  to  attend  at  his 
morning  levees.  We  hold  the  good  hours  of  the  dawn  too  sacred 
to  waste  them  upon  such  observances ;  which  have  in  them, 
besides,  something  Pagan  and  Persic.  To  say  truth,  we  never 
anticipated  our  usual  hour,  or  got  up  with  the  sun  (as  'tis  called), 
to  go  a  journey,  or  upon  a  foolish  whole  day's  pleasuring,  but  we 
suffered  for  it  all  the  long  hours  after  in  listlessness  and  head- 
aches ;  Nature  herself  sufficiently  declaring  her  sense  of  our  pre- 
sumption in  aspiring  to  regulate  our  frail  waking  courses  by  the 
measures  of  that  celestial  and  sleepless  traveller.  We  deny  not 
that  there  is  something  sprightly  and  vigorous  at  the  outset  espe- 
cially, in  these  break-of-day  excursions.  It  is  flattering  to  get  the 
start  of  a  lazy  world  ;  to  conquer  death  by  proxy  in  his  image. 
But  the  seeds  of  sleep  and  mortality  are  in  us ;  and  we  pay 
usually,  in  strange  qualms  before  night  falls,  the  penalty  of  the 
unnatural  inversion.  Therefore,  while  the  busy  part  of  mankind 
are  fast  huddling  on  their  clothes,  are  already  up  and  about  their 
occupations,  content  to  have  swallowed  their  sleep  by  wholesale  ; 
we  choose  to  linger  a-bed,  and  digest  our  dreams.  It  is  the  very 
time  to  recombine  the  wandering  images,  which  night  in  a  con- 
fused mass  presented ;  to  snatch  them  from  forgetfulness  ;  to  shape 
and  mould  them.  Some  people  have  no  good  of  their  dreams. 
Like  fast  feeders,  they  gulp  them  too  grossly,  to  taste  them  curi- 
ously.  We  love  to  chew  the  cud  of  a  foregone  vision  ;  to  collect 
the  scattered  rays  of  a  brighter  phantasm,  or  act  over  again,  with 
firmer  nerves,  the  sadder  nocturnal  tragedies  ;  to  drag  into  day- 
light a  struggling  and  half- vanishing  night-mare  ;  to  handle  and 
examine  his  terrors,  or  the  airy  solaces.  We  have  too  much 
respect  for  these  spiritual  communications,  to  let  them  go  so  lightly. 
We  are  not  so  stupid,  or  so  careless  as  that  Imperial  forgetter  of 
his  dreams,  that  we  should  need  a  seer  to  remind  us  of  the  form 
of  them.  They  seem  to  us  to  have  as  much  significance  as  our 
waking  concerns :  or  rather  to  import  us  more  nearly,  as  more 
nearly  we  approach  by  years  to  the  shadowy  world,  whither  we 
are  hastening.  We  have  shaken  hands  with  the  world's  business  ; 
we  have  done  with  it ;  we  have  discharged  ourself  of  it.  Why 
should  we  get  up  ?  we  have  neither  suit  to  solicit,  nor  affairs  to 
manage.     The  drama  has  shut  in  upon  us  at  the  fourth  act.    We 


164  ELI  A 

have  nothing  here  to  expect,  but  in  a  short  time  a  sick  bed,  and  a 
dismissal.  We  delight  to  anticipate  death  by  such  shadows  as 
night  affords.  We  are  already  half  acquainted  with  ghosts.  We 
were  never  much  in  the  world.  Disappointment  early  struck  a 
dark  veil  between  us  and  its  dazzling  illusions.  Our  spirits 
showed  grey  before  our  hairs.  The  mighty  changes  of  the 
world  already  appear  as  but  the  vain  stuff  out  of  which  dramas 
are  composed.  We  have  asked  no  more  of  life  than  what  the 
mimic  images  in  play-houses  present  us  with.  Even  those  types 
have  waxed  fainter.  Our  clock  appears  to  have  struck.  We 
are  superannuated.  In  this  dearth  of  mundane  satisfaction, 
we  contract  politic  alliances  with  shadows.  It  is  good  to  have 
friends  at  court.  The  abstracted  media  of  dreams  seem  no  ill 
introduction  to  that  spiritual  presence,  upon  which,  in  no  long 
time,  we  expect  to  be  thrown.  We  are  trying  to  know  a  little 
of  the  usages  of  that  colony  ;  to  learn  the  language,  and  the 
faces  we  shall  meet  with  there,  that  we  may  be  the  less  awk- 
ward at  our  first  coming  among  them.  We  willingly  call  a 
phantom  our  fellow,  as  knowing  we  shall  soon  be  of  their  dark 
companionship.  Therefore,  we  cherish  dreams.  We  try  to 
spell  in  them  the  alphabet  of  the  invisible  world  ;  and  think  we 
know  already,  how  it  shall  be  with  us.  Those  uncouth  shapes, 
which,  while  we  clung  to  flesh  and  blood,  affrighted  us,  have 
become  familiar.  We  feel  attenuated  into  their  meagre  essences, 
and  have  given  the  hand  a  half-way  approach  to  incorporal  being. 
We  once  thought  life  to  be  something ;  but  it  has  unaccountably 
fallen  from  us  before  its  time.  Therefore  we  choose  to  dally  with 
visions.  The  sun  has  no  purposes  of  ours  to  light  us  to.  Why 
should  we  get  up  ? 


XV. 

THAT   V7E    SHOULD    LIE    DOWN    WITH    THE    LAMB. 

We  could  never  quite  understand  the  philosophy  of  this  arrange- 
ment, or  the  wisdom  of  our  ancestors  in  sending  us  for  instruction 
to  these  woolly  bedfellows.     A  sheep,  when  it  is  dark,  has  nothing 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  165 

to  do  but  to  shut  his  silly  eyes,  and  sleep  if  he  can.  Man  found 
out  long  sixes, — Hail,  candle-light !  without  disparagement  to  sun 
or  moon,  the  kindliest  luminary  of  the  three — if  we  may  not 
rather  style  thee  the  irradiant  deputy,  mild  viceroy  of  the  moon ! — 
We  love  to  read,  talk,  sit  silent,  eat,  drink,  sleep,  by  candle-light. 
They  are  everybody's  sun  and  moon.  This  is  our  peculiar  and 
household  planet.  Wanting  it,  what  savage  unsocial  nights 
must  our  ancestors  have  spent,  wintering  in  caves  and  unillu- 
mined  fastnesses  !  They  must  have  lain  about  and  grumbled  at 
one  another  in  the  dark.  What  repartees  could  have  passed, 
when  you  must  have  felt  about  for  a  smile,  and  handled  a  neigh- 
bor's cheek  to  be  sure  that  he  understood  it  ?  This  accounts  for 
the  seriousness  of  the  elder  poetry.  It  has  a  sombre  cast  (try 
Hesiod  or  Ossian),  derived  from  the  tradition  of  those  unlantern'd 
nights.  Jokes  came  in  with  candles.  We  wonder  how  they 
saw  to  pick  up  a  pin,  if  they  had  any.  How  did  they  sup  ?  what 
a  melange  of  chance  carving  they  must  have  made  it ! — here  one 
had  got  the  leg  of  a  goat,  when  he  wanted  a  horse's  shoulder — 
there  another  had  dipped  his  scooped  palm  in  a  kid-skin  of  wild 
honey,  when  he  meditated  right  mare's  milk.  There  is  neither 
good  eating  nor  drinking  in  fresco.  Who,  even  in  these  civilized 
times,  has  never  experienced  this,  when  at  some  economic  table 
he  has  commenced  dining  after  dusk,  and  waited  for  the  flavor 
till  the  lights  came  ?  The  senses  can  absolutely  give  and  take 
reciprocally.  Can  you  tell  pork  from  veal  in  the  dark  ?  or  dis- 
tinguish Sherris  from  pure  Malaga  ?  Take  away  the  candle 
from  the  smoking  man  ;  by  the  glimmering  of  the  left  ashes,  he 
knows  that  he  is  still  smoking,  but  he  knows  it  only  by  an  infe- 
rence ;  till  the  restored  light,  coming  in  aid  of  the  olfactories, 
reveals  to  both  senses  the  full  aroma.  Then  how  he  redoubles 
his  puflJs  !  how  .le  burnishes  ! — There  is  absolutely  no  such  thing 
as  reading  but  by  a  candle.  We  have  tried  the  affectation  of  a 
book  at  noon-day  in  gardens,  and  in  sultry  arbors ;  but  it  was 
labor  thrown  away.  Those  gay  motes  in  the  beam  come  about 
you,  hovering  and  teasing,  like  so  many  coquettes,  that  will  have 
you  all  to  their  self,  and  are  jealous  of  your  abstractions.  By 
the  midnight  taper,  the  writer  digests  his  meditations.  By  the 
same  light  we  must  approach  to  their  perusal,  if  we  would  catch 


166  ELIA 

the  flame,  the  odor.  Tt  is  a  mockery,  all  that  is  reported  of  the 
influential  Phoebus.  No  true  poem  ever  owed  its  birth  to  the 
sun's  light.     They  are  abstracted  works — 

*'  Things  that  were  born,  when  none  but  the  still  night. 
And  his  dumb  candle,  saw  his  pinching  throes." 

Marry,  daylight — daylight  might  furnish  the  images,  the  crude 
material ;  but  for  the  fine  shapings,  the  true  turning  and  filing 
(as  mine  author  hath  it),  they  must  be  content  to  hold  their  inspi- 
ration of  the  candle.  The  mild  internal  light,  that  reveals  them, 
like  fires  on  the  domestic  hearth,  goes  out  in  the  sun-shine. 
Night  and  silence  call  out  the  starry  fancies.  Milton's  Morning 
Hymn  in  Paradise,  we  would  hold  a  good  wager,  was  penned  at 
midnight  •;  and  Taylor's  rich  description  of  a  sun-rise  smells  de- 
cidedly of  the  taper.  Even  ourself,  in  these  our  humbler  lucubra- 
tions, tune  our  best-measured  cadences  (Prose  has  her  cadences) 
not  unfrequently  to  the  charm  of  the  drowsier  watchman,  "  bless- 
ing the  doors ;"  or  the  wild  sweep  of  winds  at  midnight.  Even 
now  a  loftier  speculation  than  we  have  yet  attempted,  courts  our 
endeavors.  We  would  indite  something  about  the  Solar  System. 
Betty,  bring  the  candles. 


XVI. 

THAT   A    SULKY    TEMPER    IS   A   rtlSFOETUNE. 

We  grant  that  it  is,  and  a  very  serious  one — to  a  man's  friends, 
and  to  all  that  have  to  do  with  him ;  but  whether  the  condition 
of  the  man  himself  is  so  much  to  be  deplored  may  admit  of  a 
question.  We  can  speak  a  little  to  it,  being  ourself  but  lately 
recovered — we  whisper  it  in  confidence,  reader — out  of  a  long 
and  desperate  fit  of  the  sullens.  Was  the  cure  a  blessing  ?  The 
conviction  which  wrought  it,  came  too  clearly  to  leave  a  scruple 
of  the  fanciful  injuries — for  they  were  mere  fancies — which  had 
provoked  the  humor.  But  the  humor  itself  was  too  self-pleasing, 
while  it  lasted — we  know  how  bare  we  lay  ourself  in  the  con- 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  167 

fession — to  be  abandoned  all  at  once  with  the  grounds  of  it.  We 
still  brood  over  wrongs  which  we  know  to  have  been  imaginary ; 

and  for  our  old  acquaintance  N ,  whom  we  find  to  have  been 

a  truer  friend  than  we  took  him  for,  we  substitute  some  phantom 
— a  Caius  or  a  Titius — as  like  him  as  we  dare  to  form  it,  to 
wreak  our  yet  unsatisfied  resentments  on.  It  is  mortifying  to 
fall  at  once  from  the  pinnacle  of  neglect ;  to  forego  the  idea  of 
having  been  ill-used  and  contumaciously  treated,  by  an  old  friend. 
The  first  thing  to  aggrandize  a  man  in  his  own  conceit,  is  to  con- 
ceive of  himself  as  neglected.  There  let  him  fix  if  he  can. 
To  undeceive  him  is  to  deprive  him  of  the  most  tickling  morsel 
within  the  range  of  self-complacency.  No  flattery  can  come 
near  it.  Happy  is  he  who  suspects  his  friend  of  an  injustice ; 
but  supremely  blest,  who  thinks  all  his  friends  in  a  conspiracy  to 
depress  and  undervalue  him.  There  is  a  pleasure  (we  sing  not 
to  the  profane)  far  beyond  the  reach  of  all  that  the  world  counts 
joy — a  deep,  enduring  satisfaction  in  the  depths,  where  the  super- 
ficial seek  it  not,  of  discontent.  Were  we  to  recite  one  half  of 
this  mystery, — which  we  were  let  into  by  our  late  dissatisfaction, 
all  the  world  would  be  in  love  with  disrespect ;  we  should  wear 
a  slight  for  a  bracelet,  and  neglects  and  contumacies  would  be 
the  only  matter  for  courtship.  Unlike  to  that  mysterious  book 
in  the  Apocalypse,  the  study  of  this  mystery  is  unpalatable  only 
in  the  commencement.  The  first  sting  of  a  suspicion  is  grievous ; 
but  wait — out  of  that  wound,  which  to  flesh  and  blood  seemed 
so  difl[icult,  there  is  balm  and  honey  to  be  extracted.  Your 
friend  passed  you  on  such  or  such  a  day, — having  in  his  company 
one  that  you  conceived  worse  than  ambiguously  disposed  towards 
you, — passed  you  in  the  street  without  notice.  To  be  sure  he  is 
something  short-sighted ;  and  it  was  in  your  power  to  have  ac- 
costed him.  But  facts  and  sane  inferences  are  trifles  to  a  true 
adept  in  the  ccience  of  dissatisfaction.     He  must  have  seen  you  ; 

and  S ,  who  was  with  him,  must  have  been  the  cause  of  the 

contempt.  It  galls  you,  and  well  it  may.  But  have  patience. 
Go  home,  and  make  the  worst  of  it,  and  you  are  a  made  man  for 
this  time.  Shut  yourself  up,  and — rejecting,  as  an  enemy  to 
your  peace,  every  whispering  suggestion  that  but  insinuates  there 
may  be  a  mistake — reflect  seriously  ufon  the  many  lesser  in- 


168  ELIA. 

stances  which  you  had  begun  to  perceive,  in  proof  of  your  friend's 
disaffection  towards  you.     None  of  them  singly  was  much  to  the 
purpose,  but  the  aggregate  weight  is  positive  ;  and  you  have  this 
last  affront  to  clench  them.     Thus  far  the  process  is  anything  but 
agreeable.     But   now  to  your  relief  comes  in  the  comparative 
faculty.     You  conjure  up  all  the  kind  feelings  you  have  had  for 
your  friend  ;  what  you  have  been  to  him,  and  what  you  would 
have  been  to  him,  if  he  would  have  suffered  you ;  how  you  de- 
fended him  in  this  or  that  place ;  and  his  good  name — his  literary 
reputation,  and  so  forth,  was  always  dearer  to  you  than  your 
own  !     Your  heart,  spite  of  itself,  yearns  towards  him.     You 
could  weep  tears  of  blood  but  for  a  restraining  pride.     How  say 
you  !  do  you  not  yet  begin  to  apprehend  a  comfort  ?  some  alloy  of 
sweetness  in  the  bitter  waters  ?     Stop  not  here,  nor  penuriously 
cheat  yourself  of  your  reversions.     You  are  on  vantage  ground. 
Enlarge  your  speculations,  and  take  in  the  rest  of  your  friends, 
as  a  spark  kindles  more  sparks.     Was  there  one  among  them, 
who  has  not  to  you  proved  hollow,  false,  slippery  as  water  ?     Be- 
gin to  think  that  the  relation  itself  is  inconsistent  with  mortality. 
That  the  very  idea  of  friendship,  with  its  component  parts,  as 
honor,   fidelity,   steadiness,   exists   but   in   your   single   bosom. 
Image  yourself  to  yourself,  as  the  only  possible  friend  in  a  world 
incapable  of  that  communion.     Now  the  gloom  thickens.     The 
little  star  of  self-love  twinkles,  that  is  to  encourage  you  through 
deeper  glooms  than  this.     You  are  not  yet  at  the  half  point  of 
your  elevation.     You  are  not  yet,  believe  me,  half  sulky  enough. 
Adverting  to  the  world  in  general  (as  these  circles  in  the  mind 
will  spread  to  infinity),  reflect  with  what  strange  injustice  you 
have  been  treated  in  quarters  where  (setting  gratitude  and  the 
expectation  of  friendly  returns  aside  as  chimeras)  you  pretended 
no  claim  beyond  justice,  the  naked  due  of  all  men.     Think  the 
very  idea  of  right  and  fit  fled  from  the  earth,  or  your  breast  the 
solitary  receptacle  of  it,  till  you  have  swelled  yourself  into  at 
least  one  hemisphere ;  the  other  being  the  vast  Arabia  Stony  of 
your  friends  and  the  world  aforesaid.     To  grow  bigger  every 
moment  in  your  own  conceit,  and  the  world  to  lessen ;  to  deify 
yourself  at  the  expense  of  your  species  ;  to  judge  the  world — this 
is  the  acme  and  supreme  poinl  of  your  mystery — these  the  true 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  169 


Pleasures  of  Sulkiness.  We  profess  no  more  of  this  grand 
secret  than  what  ourself  experimented  on  one  rainy  afternoon  in 
the  last  week,  sulking  in  our  study.  We  had  proceeded  to  the 
penultimate  point,  at  which  the  true  adept  seldom  stops,  where 
the  consideration  of  benefit  forgot  is  about  to  merge  in  the  medi- 
tation of  general  injustice — when  a  knock  at  the  door  was  followed 
by  the  entrance  of  the  very  friend  whose  not  seeing  of  us  in  the 
morning  (for  we  will  now  confess  the  case  our  own),  an  acci- 
dental oversight,  had  given  rise  to  so  much  agreeable  generaliza- 
tion !  To  mortify  us  still  more,  and  take  down  the  whole  flatter- 
ing superstructure  which  pride  had  piled  upon  neglect,  he  had 

brought  in  his  hand  the  identical  S ,  in  whose  favor  we  had 

suspected  him  of  the  contumacy.  Asseverations  were  needless, 
where  the  frank  manner  of  them  both  was  convictive  of  the  inju- 
rious nature  of  the  suspicion.  We  fancied  that  they  perceived 
our  embarrassment ;  but  were  too  proud,  or  something  else,  to 
confess  to  the  secret  of  it.  We  had  been  but  too  lately  in  the 
condition  of  the  noble  patient  in  Argos  :— 

Qui  se  credebat  miros  audire  tragoedos, 
In  vacuo  laetus  sessor  plausorque  theatre — 

an(^  could  have  exclaimed  with  equal  reason  against  the  friendly 
hands  that  cured  us — 

Pol,  me  occidistis,  amici, 
Non  servastis,  ait ;  cui  sic  extorta  voluptas, 
Et  demptus  per  vim  mentis  gratissimus  error. 


RND    or    THE    SECOND    SERIES. 


I 


UnWeRSITY  of  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


LD  21-I00m-12,'46(A2012S16)4120 


"&Mmj^^ 


MZ^<^ 


E"^^ 

—III  '''               ji_  *^'l5El  "^  «  *= 

i^-B*Mi>*«MMfa»'y-»-      ■  •  "    >«'  ■-*' 

-.r^ll^gg 

^R^i^'^^.v^r^:;.^  -^^ 

..   -^  ---5* 

i^K^^ 


Mid77820 


THE  UNIVERSmr  OF  CAUFORNIA  LIBRARY 


•i 


n^ 


m':. 


■*3C'       tc 


